AUTHORITIES declared the search for victims of the Miami condo collapse officially over on Friday – but one of the 98 victims remains missing a month on.
Estelle Hedaya, 54, who left New York for Florida to pursue jewelry – hasn’t been found and is believed to be the 98th victim to perish when in the middle of the night on June 24 the 12-floor Champlain Towers South building toppled.
First responders battled away to comb through 14,000 tons of broken concrete and rebar that made up the rubble mountain in hopes of finding survivors.
Then weeks passed by with the pile and workers getting soaked by a tropical storm and a controlled detonation to raze the structure.
The mission soon changed from rescue to one of recovery of remains.
“Torture is the only word I can think of to describe what our lives have been like since this happened,” the missing woman’s 74-year-old mother Linda Hedaya told the New York Times.
“This has been heartbreaking and heart-wrenching.”
On the morning when the condominium came down, the mother had just made her bed when she stopped in her tracks after learning a condo building had crashed to the ground.
On the local television news, the mother who lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband Abe, instantly saw the building that housed her daughter who moved there six years ago, according to the Times.
The well-traveled woman was enjoying her life in the sun, tooling around in a red car and shedding some pounds.
Like many families tied to the building collapse, her mother panicked and tried to call in hopes of reaching her safe and sound daughter.
She wouldn’t get the chance.
“How do you go to sleep one night and wake up the next morning and your daughter is gone like this,” she said in the interview with the Times.
“Our beliefs keep us grounded as much as we can be in a situation like this.”
With no word, the mother traveled to Surfside to visit the collapse with her son, Ikey, who submitted a DNA sample to authorities.
“I took one look at the debris and I thought about that fact that my sister was in all that rubble,” he said.
It was too much to bear.
“I turned around and left.”
Despite the unknown about Hedaya’s whereabouts, the city’s mayor promised the search won’t quit.
“From the very beginning, my position was: We’re not leaving anyone behind,” Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett announced after paying tribute to the site on Friday.
If Hedaya’s remains are discovered, they will likely be somewhere in the pile that was moved to a local warehouse.
“We believe there is one victim still unaccounted for,” Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said in a statement.
“We’re also very grateful to Miami-Dade Police Department which has been leading the investigation since the beginning, and now continues the challenging work of continuing to sift through millions of pounds of debris, searching for remains and personal items to bring closure to families.”
