A woman who fell four floors in the collapse of a condo complex in Surfside, Florida and broke her pelvis still managed to pull herself and her teenage daughter out of the rubble.
Angela Gonzalez and her daughter, 16-year-old Devon, were in their home in Champlain Towers South when the residential complex near Miami Beach partially collapsed on early Thursday morning.
The mother and daughter fell from the 9th floor to the 4th floor and Gonzalez sustained a broken pelvis in the fall. However, she successfully pulled Devon from the rubble and the two were later taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital, according to CBS Miami.
Unfortunately, Gonzalez's husband and Devon's father, Edgar Gonzalez, remains missing following the tragedy.
He is among the 159 people still unaccounted for on Friday morning, while the official death toll currently stands at four.
Lisa Melencial, a friend of the Gonzalez family, spoke to CBS Miami about the incident in an interview published early Friday morning. She was at the hospital where Angela and Devon Gonzalez were receiving treatment.
"Wasn't something that I thought I would come down to this, I guess. But pick up the pieces, trying to figure out how to make this work, how to make this better than what it is," Melencial said.
"Even though it's a tragic scenario. I just want prayers and just the best for her and her family," she said.
"Hope for the best. Everybody just give prayers. Everybody else's families or any colleagues or friends that were in the incidents, I wish you prayers, thoughts [...] And I hope everybody gets well," Melencial added.
It is feared that the death toll from the collapse will rise as rescue workers continued to search the rubble overnight. Champlain Towers South was 12 floors tall and had more than 100 residential units.
Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told ABC News' Good Morning America on Friday that there were now four confirmed dead.
"Tragically, I woke up to learn that three bodies had been pulled from the rubble last night," Cava said, adding that it was "devastating news for families waiting for any hope of survival. And of course, we're going to continue to search."
President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration for the state of Florida and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has arrived to assist local authorities.
It is not yet known what caused the building to collapse but there will be a full investigation once the rescue efforts have concluded. The structure was built in 1981 and Surfside requires commercial and multi-family buildings to be recertified every 40 years, according to USA Today.
