Miami building collapse - updates: Death toll reaches 12 as extra rescue team requested amid tropical forecast

Press conference happening soon in Surfside

Officials are holding another news conference on Sunday at the location of the residential building collapse.

This press conference will come after family members of those missing and dead were bussed to the site of the collapse earlier in the day.

The press conference is expected to start at 5:30pm local time.

Many of the missing in the Champlain Towers South disaster are members of the tight-knit, local Jewish community.

The Shul of Bal Harbour counts more than a dozen of its members as missing, and has become a site collecting donation supplies. Families and friends of those impacted by the disaster also joined together on Sunday for a prayer service.

“We Jewish people have learned through history that we live with almost impossible hope,” Rabbi Sholom Lipskar told WSVN.

Teams of search and rescue experts from Mexico and Israel arrived in Florida today to assist in the search for those affected by the Champlain Towers South disaster, where nine are dead and at least 156 are missing after the apartment tower collapsed.

“Today, at the request of some Surfside families, we welcomed an expert IDF recovery team to supplement Surfside’s search and rescue efforts,” Florida governor Ron DeSantis said of the team from the Israeli Defense Force, thanking Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett.

Officials have just begun updating the public on the latest information about the Champlain Towers South disaster.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars have already been raised for victims of the Champlain Towers disaster.

GoFundMe has a list of verified crowdfunding campaigns here for those touched by the tragedy, which has killed at least nine people, with 156 unaccounted for.

The Miami Heat NBA basketball team have also set up a site called SupportSurfside.org to coordinate relief efforts.

Other ways to help include donations to the Greater Miami Jewish Federation, Operation Helping Hands, and the Miami Tragedy Central Emergency Fund.

Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said on Sunday that more people have been accounted for as part of the Champlain Towers search and rescue efforts.

134 people have been accounted for, while 152 remain missing.

Ms Cava also said SupportSurfside.org, a relief effort, has raised about $1.2 million.

Families of those affected by the Champlain Towers collapse in South Florida had the opportunity today to visit the ongoing search-and-rescue site, according to officials.

The ability to see the site up close, according to US representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who represents this part of Florida, helped the group find “solace out of the closeness and the proximity,” where they can “hold onto hope or perhaps begin to face the enormity of the crisis we’re dealing with here.”

The congresswoman said at a news update on Sunday evening this sort of tragedy is “unprecedented” in the US.

“We are used to dealing with natural disaster and the aftermath of natural disaster here in South Florida,” she added. “What we’re talking about here is an unprecedented tragedy, an unprecedented crisis, and one that is incompatible anywhere in the US before now. Making sure that we inject and infuse humanity rather than bureaucracy throughout our response is so critical.”

Many of the victims of the Champlain Towers collapse are Jewish, and the Israeli government sent its minister of diaspora affairs to Florida to provide comfort. This was his message to survivors, as he told WPLG. “They haven’t heard anything from there. So far only bodies were found and not too many. We tried to encourage them,” Nachman Shia said. “Don’t lose hope. That’s what I would say. Don’t lose hope.”

Community members and loved ones decorated a nearby fence with flowers, photos, and messages to those lost or missing in the Champlain Towers disaster in South Florida.

Search and rescue personnel were reportedly placing children’s toys found in the wreckage at the memorial.

Emergency responders who are sifting through the wreckage of the Champlain Towers disaster in South Florida have begun taking DNA samples of the rubble to help identify the 152 people who remain missing in the condo collapse, according to Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.

Search and rescue crews also began exploring a massive trench beneath the rubble as a way to look for more survivors.