Miami condo rescuers face ‘heavy smell of bodies’, Israeli soldier helping with search says

‘They experience a heavy, heavy smell of bodies, and to do the actions when you have that smell on the site is a very tough challenge,’ says Israeli Defense Forces Commander Elad Edri

An Israeli soldier helping with the relief effort in Surfside, Florida says rescue workers must contend with a number of obstacles, including the odor of corpses beneath the rubble.

“They experience a heavy, heavy smell of bodies and to do the actions when you have that smell on the site is a very tough challenge,” Israeli Defense Forces Commander Elad Edri told The Floridian.

Mr Edri is at the site of Champlain Towers South, an apartment building that collapsed last week, as part of the Israeli government’s effort to aid the rescue effort. The commander says he and other workers searching through the rubble face a number of challenges.

“There are several dangers inside the pile,” he said. “First is the weather. The second is that it moves all the time.”

Rain has been a frequent obstacle to the search, and the instability of the remaining tower, which so far is still standing, has become such a concern that rescue crews actually paused their work on Thursday morning out of fear it might collapse.

In addition to these physical dangers, Mr Edri said, there is also the psychological challenge of working amid a very disturbing situation.

“The thought that under all this concrete, all this steel, there is a person, maybe a little boy, who is buried there,” is very difficult to cope with and keep working, the soldier said.

The Miami condo collapsed last Thursday at about 1:30am, leaving at least 18 people dead and 145 missing.

The chance of still finding survivors in the rubble a week later has diminished, Mr Edri said, but not disappeared.

“There is a possibility,” he said. “We do believe that there is a small chance to find [people] alive because as in experience from former operations around the world, we found [survivors] after 10 days, 12 days, and we think that although the chances are low, there is still a chance here.”

The Israeli government has sent multiple search and rescue workers to the disaster site in Surfside, including a team called the National Rescue Unit. Miami-Dade County includes a large Jewish community, and over two dozen of those missing in the collapse are Jewish.

The Israeli rescue workers have worked long hours alongside their American counterparts in the search, which is now in its eighth day.

“There is a possibility,” Mr Edri said. “It’s hard to imagine, it’s hard to believe, but I think that we brought hope here.”