Free Republic

Excerpts from the interview: Garcia, replying to Defede (about the Dems. posting to having previously a few extremists in the party, like ProudBoys): When are they [left] going to denounce the woke ideology... I will denounce any fascist here. There is no room for any hate . They try to paint us as fascists... I have denounced them we are not about that we are quite the opposite . You know me Jim.. The Democrats have taken the Hispanic group for granted...

Watch the controlled demolition of what remains of Champlain Towers South. Video Here.

SURFSIDE, Fla. (AP) - Demolition specialists finished boring holes and began laying explosives in them Sunday as they prepared to bring down the precarious but still-standing portion of a collapsed South Florida condo building, a top Miami-Dade fire official said. The work has suspended the search-and-rescue mission, but officials said it should eventually open up new areas for rescue teams to explore. Rescuers will await the “all-clear” after the demolition and then immediately dive back into the task of trying to locate any survivors buried under the rubble, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said. Officials had previously said that...

SURFSIDE, Fla. — A 7-year-old daughter of a Miami firefighter was among two additional bodies found overnight in the rubble of the collapsed condo building outside Miami, raising the death toll to 20 with 128 people still missing. "This tragedy has haunted so many of us because so many of us know somebody who was in the building or affected by this tragedy," City of Miami Mayor Francis Suarez said Friday at a news conference. "Now, not only do we know someone, but this is someone who is a member of our family, of our fire family." Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella...

Out-of-state rescuers turned away after testing positive for coronavirus SURFSIDE, Fla. – Search-and-rescue teams looked for survivors through the 9th night and into the 10th day of a delicate operation after the Champlain Towers South collapse formed a compact mountain of pancaked concrete in Surfside. There were 126 people who remained unaccounted for Saturday.

The Israeli military has created an intricate set of three-dimensional mapping diagrams of the collapsed Florida condo building and the surrounding disaster site as part of its efforts to assist local authorities in finding victims in the rubble. The Israel Defense Forces provided The Post with various images of the remaining portion of the gutted Champlain Towers South in Surfside, where the death toll stood at 16 as of Wednesday afternoon. There are still 147 people unaccounted for, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said at a press briefing. Capt. Uri Jospe, a reserves civilian population officer, told The Post in...

Water was filmed pouring from the ceiling of the doomed Miami condo and into its basement garage minutes before it collapsed - as the death toll from the disaster rose to 18. The video was recorded at 1.18am on June 24 and zooms in on the entrance to the gated garage beneath the north side of Champlain Towers South - behind which water rains from the ceiling as if blasted from a fire hose. The building was reported to have crumbled at around 1.25am. It emerged as six more bodies were pulled from the rubble of the ruined building on...

Rosendo “Ross” Prieto, who previously served as a municipal official in Florida and once told Champlain Towers South board members that their building was in “very good shape,” has left his new job. A Doral spokesman confirmed Prieto is presently on a leave of absence from a contracting business position that offers services to the city. Prieto assured Champlain Towers South board members in 2018 that their property was solid, a claim which followed an engineering company’s warning that it possessed structural deficiencies. The firm said sizeable repairs were needed to fix the building’s various issues.

Former President Donald Trump is rejecting pleas from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to postpone a campaign-style rally this weekend some 200 miles from the Miami suburb where an international search-and-rescue mission is excavating bodies from the site of a collapsed seaside condominium. DeSantis’s office has "made a direct plea” to the former president’s team, calling on it to postpone the Saturday event in Sarasota. One Florida Republican bluntly said Trump and his team need to “read the room.” “The governor is getting tested here as to how far he's going to be pushed before he breaks ranks with President Trump....

The contractor visited the condo building last week to put together a bid for a cosmetic restoration of the pool as well as to price out new pool equipment — a small piece of the multimillion-dollar restoration project that just was getting underway at the 40-year-old building. In the pool equipment room, located on the south side of the underground garage, the contractor saw another problem — exposed and corroding rebar in the concrete slab overhead. He snapped some pictures and sent them to his supervisor along with a note expressing concern that the job might be a bit more...

At least 11 people were killed and over 150 are missing in the aftermath of the collapse of the Surfside beachfront condo. Recent reports have revealed there were warning signs before the building fell as engineers reported several issues with the structure, but a local building official told board members that the building was in "very good shape." Despite the new intel, CNN asked Granholm what role a changing climate could have had on the destruction. The secretary said she needed to wait to see the analysis of the current investigation into the building collapse, but said that we should...

Letter sent months before deadly Florida collapse warned damage to condo building was accelerating A correspondence from the board president of Champlain Towers South, part of which unexpectedly crashed to the ground last week in Surfside, Florida, describes the decay at the building since 2018 saying, "the observable damage such as in the garage has gotten significantly worse since the initial inspection."Board President Jean Wodnicki addressed the letter to neighbors April 9. "The concrete deterioration is accelerating. The roof situation got much worse, so extensive roof repairs had to be incorporated," says the letter, acquired by CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront."...Wodnicki...

Survivor describes escape from Florida condo collapse: ‘I kept going, screaming ... I want to live’ ... Monteagudo, 64, was asleep Thursday morning when a strange feeling woke her. “It’s like something supernatural woke me up. I felt something strange, and I thought, 'Oh, I forgot to close the sliding door to the balcony, and the wind is making the noise,’ ” she said. “I tried to close the sliding door, and it felt like the building was moving. The door wouldn’t close.” Then Monteagudo heard a crack. There was a line in the wall coming down from the ceiling...

President Biden said Tuesday that he plans to visit the site of the deadly condo building collapse near Miami. “Hopefully as early as Thursday,” Biden told reporters as he left the White House for a trip to Wisconsin to promote a bipartisan infrastructure plan. The White House press office confirmed moments later that Biden and first lady Jill Biden will make the trip Thursday.

SURFSIDE, Fla. (AP) — About a block from the Miami-area beachfront condominium tower that collapsed sits its sister building, erected a year later by the same company, using the same materials and a similar design. It has faced the same tides and salty air.

Personal accounts are just starting to emerge of the tragedy that unfolded Thursday morning after the partial collapse of the Champlain Towers South Condominium building in Surfside, Florida.Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava issued a news release Saturday evening that said that five victims have been confirmed dead, according to CNN. The report said 156 potential victims remain unaccounted for.One survivor, Iliana Monteagudo, who is in her 50s, recounted to the New York Post the terrifying moments after she was awoken about 1:30 a.m. by "strange noises."She told the Post she thought the sounds had come from an "open sliding...

Washington Post reporter Hannah Dreier published a series of misleading tweets over the weekend accusing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis of fumbling the state’s response to the recent building collapse in the town of Surfside. On Saturday, Dreier posted a screenshot of FEMA’s response to the recent building collapse, claiming that it took DeSantis a full 24 hours to approve any form of emergency assistance for the affected area. “There’s a saying in emergency management: The first 24 hours are the only 24 hours,” Dreier stated. “FEMA was ready to deploy to the condo collapse almost immediately, and included the crisis...

As search and rescue officials continue looking for more survivors in a Florida condo building’s rubble, some of the victims’ identities are being revealed. Stacie Fang, 54, was the first victim identified by the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner. She reportedly was pronounced dead hours after the collapse at Aventura Hospital. Many more names will be revealed in the upcoming days. Miami-Dade County, Florida, Mayor Daniella Levine Cava confirmed that the death toll from the building collapse is currently nine people “As of today, one victim passed away in the hospital, and we’ve recovered eight more victims on-site, so I am confirming...

It has been an excruciatingly agonizing wait for the families of the victims of the building collapse in Miami-Dade County’s town of Surfside. On Saturday, Gov. Ron DeSantis went to meet them at the Grand Beach Hotel Surfside. Crews have been working overnight, through the rain, and even at the risk of spontaneous fires. Officials said they are doing their best to provide regular updates at the hotel. Still, some relatives are losing their patience. “It’s not enough,” a distraught mother told DeSantis. “Imagine if your children were in there. You are going to leave here and you are going...

Engineer Warned of ‘Major Structural Damage’ at Florida Condo ComplexA consultant in 2018 urged the managers to repair cracked columns and crumbling concrete. The work was finally about to get underway when the building collapsed. Three years before the deadly collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominium complex near Miami, a consultant found alarming evidence of “major structural damage” to the concrete slab below the pool deck and “abundant” cracking and crumbling of the columns, beams and walls of the parking garage under the 13-story building. The engineer’s report helped shape plans for a multimillion-dollar repair project that was set...