Prosecutor to ask grand jury to investigate Miami building collapse

Miami’s top prosecutor said she will ask a grand jury to investigate last week’s partial collapse of a Miami Beach-area condo building.

“My office has a long tradition of presenting more than just criminal cases to the Grand Jury,” Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said Tuesday in a statement. “Our Grand Juries have also served as a cross-section of the community to evaluate matters of health and public safety,” she said, adding that the grand jury issued a report in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

“I plan to request that our Grand Jury look at what steps we can take to safeguard our residents without jeopardizing any scientific, public safety, or potential criminal investigations,” she added.

It is not clear when Fernandez Rundle plans to bring the matter before grand jurors.

She said she sent prosecutors as well as victim specialists to the site last Thursday morning, hours after nearly half of Champlain Towers South in the town of Surfside flattened.

Officials said Tuesday night that 12 people were confirmed dead, and 149 were still unaccounted for.

More than 200 people are working on the mound of rubble in what authorities say is still a search and rescue operation.

“I have been overwhelmed by the heroics of the first responders who have labored tirelessly to save lives,” said Fernandez Rundle, who has also visited the site multiple times.

She said engineers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which investigated in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, have told her that their investigation into the cause of the collapse would “take a long time.”

“It is painstaking and complicated work,” Fernandez Rundle said. “I will not do anything to jeopardize their investigative findings. However, this is a matter of extreme public importance, and as the State Attorney elected to keep this community safe, I will not wait.”

Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told reporters Tuesday that she is “very supportive of the grand jury investigation” and “will do everything possible to aid them.”