10 | JULY 1 • 2021 

A

survivor of the 
Miami-area build-
ing collapse has 
described how the condo 
came down in three stages, 
giving him and his family time 
to escape the deadly disaster 
after their mother told them 
to run for their lives.
Gavriel Nir said that the 
condo complex in the town 
of Surfside near Miami, fell 
to pieces over a period of 
a few minutes on June 24. 
The 12-story oceanfront 
Champlain Towers South 
pancaked in the middle of the 
night as residents slept.
“If it wasn’t for my mom, it 
would have been very bad,” 
Nir told Channel 13 News in 
an interview June 27.
“My mom is very special,” 
said Nir, who offered a special 
prayer in a synagogue to give 

thanks for his escape. “
Any 
time she senses something 
suspicious she automatically 
is always cautious. She always 
figures out that something is 
not right.”
Nir, the son of an Israeli 
father, described how his 
mother went to check what 
had happened when the first 
part of the building collapsed, 
apparently a parking area, and 

then raised the alert for him 
and his sister. All three sur-
vived the disaster.
“We heard a lot of noise 
going on in the ceiling,” he 
said. “Minute by minute, it got 
worse, it got more intense.”
Moments later a rumble 
shook the building and “we all 
panicked a bit.”
The family at first thought 
it was an earthquake and left 
their home to exit the build-
ing. Outside, Nir said, dust 
was billowing about from the 
parts of the building that had 
already collapsed.
Wasting no more time, 
the family ran for their lives, 
escaping with just moments to 
spare as the main part of the 
building collapsed, throwing 
up clouds of dust that chased 
them down the street.
“We couldn’t breathe,
” he said.
Nir estimated that the whole 
process was no more than a 
few minutes. He said the first 
sounds of the collapse were 
heard at around 1:15 a.m. 
Thursday and that the entire 
building came down by 1:19.
Other families were left 
waiting to learn the fate of 
their loved ones who were 
inside and have not been 
heard from since.

Kevin Spigel told Channel 
13 that his wife, Judy, was still 
missing.
Spigel said that Judy “loves 
Israel and supports it any way 
shape or form” and that the 
family would often visit the 
Jewish state.

WAITING AND HOPING
The family, along with many 
others waiting as the rescue 
continues, were determined to 
not give up hope.
According to the report, 
there are 34 Jewish people 
missing in the rubble.
Odelia Weiss, who is active 
in a local synagogue, told the 
station that among those who 
are missing were the family 
and friends of a woman from 
the community who had died 
before the collapse. The visi-
tors had arrived to stay in an 
unit in the building.
“They have not yet been 
found,” she said.
By Monday morning, the 
death toll rose to nine people 
with more than 150 additional 
people still missing.
Magen David Adom’s inter-
national unit and paramedics 
and EMTs with the South 
Florida Hatzalah have been 
working around the clock at 
the disaster site.
Surfside is one of four small 
cities that together make up 
North Beach, the north end of 
Miami Beach, just east of the 
city of Miami. The area covers 
the top of a narrow stretch of 
land on the Atlantic Ocean. 
The area is more than a 
third Jewish. In total, North 
Beach has more than 14,000 
residents and more than 5,000 
Jews, according to Ira Sheskin, 
who authored a 2014 Jewish 
population study on the great-
er Miami area. 

JTA contributed to this report.

For more news on the Florida Disaster, 

see pages 30-31.

Mom’s Instinct
Saved Family

Up to 159 victims feared in 
Florida building collapse.

FLORIDA DISASTER

STUART WINER TIMES OF ISRAEL

Gavriel Nir

SCREEN CAPTURE: CHANNEL 13/TIMES OF ISRAEL

Search and Rescue 
teams look for possible 
survivors in the partial-
ly collapsed 12-story 
Champlain Towers 
South condo building 
in Surfside, Fla. 

PHOTO BY GIORGIO VIERA / AFP/TIMES OF ISRAEL

