What we know about the victims of the Champlain Towers collapse
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More than 150 people are still unaccounted for in Surfside, Fla., after a 12-story condo building partially collapsed Thursday. Nine people have been confirmed dead, one of whom died in the hospital after being pulled from the building's wreckage. Here is what we know so far about the victims that have been identified by authorities, and some of those who remain missing.
Stacie Fang
Fifty-four-year-old Fang was the first victim identified by the Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner's office. Fang was transported to Aventura Hospital where she was treated for blunt force trauma. She succumbed to her injuries and died at the medical center.
She is survived by her son, 15-year-old Jonah Handler, who was rescued from the rubble shortly after the tower collapsed early Thursday morning.
"There are no words to describe the tragic loss of our beloved Stacie. The members of the Fang and Handler family would like to express our deepest appreciation for the outpouring of sympathy, compassion and support we have received," NBC6 in Miami reported. "The many heartfelt words of encouragement and love have served as a much needed source of strength during this devastating time."
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She was expected to be buried in New Jersey on Sunday, according to NBC6.
She lived in apartment 1002.
Gladys and Antonio Lozano
Mere hours before the building partially collapsed, Antonio, 83, and his wife Gladys, 79, were enjoying dinner with their son, Sergio. The couple lived in apartment 903 and could see Sergio's tower apartment opposite their own.
The couple had known each other for more than 60 years, according to Miami's Local10. They would have celebrated their 59th wedding anniversary next month.
Sergio told the station that peace might be found in knowing that the two "went together and went quickly."
Antonio and Gladys at one point in time joked that neither wanted the other to die first because they didn't want to live without each other.
Manuel ‘Manny’ LaFont
A native of Houston, 54-year-old LaFont was in apartment 801. He was in the eighth-floor unit with another person also from Houston, who is believed to be a family friend of LaFont's, Houston's ABC13 reported. The identify of the second person is being withheld until the family is notified.
LaFont's former wife, Adriana Lafont, said he was an adoring father of two. They had celebrated Father's Day together just days earlier.
"I lived in that building for 10 years," she told the station. "My kids were born there. They learned how to swim in that pool. We had birthday parties, first communions, baptisms, so many memories."
Linda March
Among the missing was Linda March, who eagerly traded a cramped New York apartment for fresh air and ocean views after surviving a COVID-19 infection. She even bought a bright pink bicycle to cruise around Miami with, best friend Rochelle Laufer said.
March rented Penthouse 4, and was using the second bedroom of the furnished apartment as her office, Laufer told the Associated Press on Sunday.
Thursday's partial collapse of the condominium building left the penthouse's interior exposed, with bunk beds and an office chair still intact just inside the broken edge where the rest of the 12-story structure crumbled into a pile of debris.
Another friend, Dawn Falco, said she had been talking on the phone with March until just two hours before the disaster. Falco said she immediately began searching for word on her friend, who she said never leaves the house “without a smile.”
“My heart is breaking as I see the office chair that she just purchased next to the bunkbeds,” Falco said.
Florida was a new start for the 58-year-old attorney. In the past decade, she’d lost her sister and mother to cancer, her father died a few years later and she and her husband divorced. She had no children.
“She would say to me, ‘I’m all alone. I don’t have family,’ and I would say, ‘You’re my sister, you don’t have to be born sisters. And I said you always have me,'" Laufer recounted through tears.
Laufer said March loved the ocean views but hated the incessant noise from nearby construction and had decided to break her lease. “She was looking for another apartment when this happened,” Laufer said sadly.
Still, Laufer had been planning to visit her friend this fall.
“I joked I’m going to take the top bunk when I visit,” she said.
The Patel family
The missing include Vishal Patel, his wife, Bhavna, and their 1-year-old daughter. Bhavna Patel is four months pregnant.
Vishal Patel's niece Sarina Patel told KABC-TV that she talked to her uncle on Father’s Day, telling him that she had bought a ticket to go see the couple and meet their child. Since the building’s collapse, her family has tried texting and calling, but hasn't heard back, she said.
“We’re starting to prepare for the negative possibility, especially as the hours pass, but at the end of the day our family is very hopeful,” she said. “I just keep praying they have found a pocket somewhere where they were able to seek shelter and just waiting to be found.”
Sarina Patel said her aunt and uncle moved into the building two years ago. Her family is desperate for answers, she said.
“If they said they wanted volunteers, I would be on a plane and I would go start helping. Anything to make it go faster,” she told KABC. “Miracles do happen,” she said.
Judy Spiegel
Rachel Spiegel is still waiting for word on her mother, 66-year-old Judy Spiegel, who lived for her family and would go to any length to show her love. She had been swimming with her two granddaughters this month when one of them remarked how much she wanted a specific Disney princess dress.
The dress was sold out, Rachel said, but the doting grandmother immediately began hunting across several stores until she found it.
“She’s very thoughtful, she cared about the details,” a tearful Rachel told the Associated Press. “She was certainly the matriarch of our family.”
Her daughter joked that Judy was a terrible cook, but whenever anyone came to the house, she knew everyone’s favorite foods and quirks and made sure everything was perfectly arranged. She never went a night without her beloved Ben and Jerry’s chocolate ice cream, her daughter said.
She was also a passionate advocate for Holocaust awareness.
“My mom is an incredible person. She has the best heart and we need to find her.”
Elaine Sabino
Elaine Sabino, 70, treated others with the same care and kindness she displayed as a flight attendant for US Airways and JetBlue, her friend said.
“The main thing people know about Elaine is, she’s always there to give you a hand in everything you’re doing,” her friend, Shelly Angle, told the Miami Herald. “She was the ultimate hostess, on the airplane, everywhere.”
Sabino, who was in a penthouse on the 12th floor when the structure collapsed, is still missing.
Angle said her friend was staying active, and was an excellent jazz and belly dancer. Sabino graduated from the University of Florida, where she was a baton twirler on the Gatorette team. Later, she taught baton twirling and judged national competitions.
She had been complaining about construction on the roof of the condo building, her brother-in-law, Douglas Berdeaux, told the Washington Post. There has been no determination about what made the building crumble.
“She said she was worried that the ceiling was going to collapse on top of her bed,” he said.
Claudio and Maria Obias Bonnefoy
The worried daughters of a Chilean man and his wife who lived on the 10th floor of Champlain Towers South arrived at the scene with growing anger over what they're learning about problems with the building before it collapsed.
Sisters Anne Marie and Pascale Bonnefoy said their father Claudio Bonnefoy and his Filipino-American wife Maria Obias Bonnefoy had been spending little time in the apartment, and probably wouldn't have been among the missing if not for the pandemic.
Bonnefoy, an 85-year-old lawyer, is the second cousin of former Chilean President and High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, and both he and his wife worked for international organizations, they said.
“We are just processing all this but this is starting to make me angry because reports from years ago reporting serious structural damage to the building are little by little being known,” said Pascale Bonnefoy. “Notifications that have been ignored, or even that the building was built on wetlands, that the construction was with sand and that the salt began to corrode the iron.”
Richard Augustine
Richard Augustine, 77, was just hours away from a flight to Chicago, where his daughter, Debbie Hill, had planned to pick him up at the airport.
Instead, she watched video of the condo collapse, and could see her dad’s upper-floor unit plummeting, then disappearing in a cloud of dust.
“That was pretty scary to watch,” she told Chicago’s ABC7. “Immediately I tried to call him and his phone went straight to voicemail.”
Augustine had just visited his son in California, and went back to his Florida home to repack for the weekend visit with his daughter.
Augustine grew up in the Chicago area and lived in the suburbs before moving to Florida, where he worked in the air freight industry and planned to retire in the fall.
Hill told FOX32 in Chicago that her father shared the apartment with a roommate, who also was still missing.
The Mora family
Juan Mora Jr., who works for Morton Salt in Chicago, had been staying with his parents, Juan and Ana Mora, when the building collapsed.
Immigrants from Cuba and devout Catholics, they took their family on missionary trips to the Caribbean to build churches and bridges, said Jeanne Ugarte, a close friend of Ana's. Later, they became like second parents to Juan Jr.'s friends in Chicago, where their son has managed East Coast distribution for Morton Salt’s road salt business, his friend Matthew Kaade said.
When the Moras came to visit, they would take all of Juan Jr.‘s friends out to dinner. In Florida, they introduced Kaade to Cuban coffee and food, he said. “They were the kind of people that even if someone says ‘I’m not hungry,’ they would just continue to order food to make sure you had a full belly,” he said.
Kaade, who graduated with Mora from Loyala University Chicago in 2011, said he texted this month saying he was planning to return to Chicago in early August.
“I was super excited to get him to come back,” said Kaade. He described Juan Jr., an avid Chicago Cubs fan, as genuine and someone his friends could always rely on “to be real and straight” with them.
No matter what happens, a group of friends will travel down to Florida — hopefully to celebrate with Juan Jr. and his family when they are found — but sure to celebrate him either way, because that's what he would have wanted, Kaade said.
“No matter the outcome, it will be a celebration of his life,” he said. “I keep saying your story is not over. ... I have hope that it will be Juan continuing his own story, but no matter what, I’ll be there to be one of the many to help carry it on,” he said.
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