The Fire-Rescue Debacle in Miami-Dade

In less than four hours it will be three full days since Champlain Towers South collapsed. Fire-Rescue has moved too slowly. They are deterred by everything, rain, heat, smoke, fire that they can't find the source of, fear of instability and falling debris. Search and rescue is their job, braving danger is part of the job spec. I don't thank them for doing their jobs. I don't praise them for doing their jobs like this: timidly, tentatively, slooowly, adding up to callousness.

There are five dead at this writing and 156 missing. Fire-Rescue may yet pull a live one or two out of the rubble but their pace makes that less and less likely with each hour that passes. Families of the missing are in exasperated agony, with good reason. Fire-Rescue has kept them dangling on "hope." Let's call it what it is: forlorn hope, a cruel tease. Those 156 missing are dead, or will be dead from dehydration by the time Fire-Rescue delicately picks their way to them.