It's been more than a month since the tragic collapse of the Champlain Towers South building in June. The final death toll stands at 98 people who lost their lives after a portion of the building crashed to the ground.
Since the horrific collapse, the Support Surfside Fund — a combined effort from The Miami Foundation, Coral Gables Community Foundation and Key Biscayne Community Foundation — has raised more than $4.5 million for relief.
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Now a steering committee has been established, with the nonprofit the National Compassion Fund, to distribute those donations. According to the Support Surfside website, donations will be continue to be accepted through Oct. 15, with distributions taking place in Nov. 2021.
100% of the money will go to victims' families, survivors, and people affected.
Yet — distributing funds after a traumatic event is a niche skill set.
One that Tom Hoyer is familiar with.
Hoyer is one of the volunteers on the Support Surfside Steering Committee. He brings more than 30 years of financial experience to the role. He also brings personal experience: he lost his son Luke in the Parkland shooting in 2018.
Since the shooting, Hoyer has served as the treasurer for the organization, Stand With Parkland, which pushes policymakers for: school safety enhancements, mental health support, and responsible firearms ownership.
He spoke with WLRN recently about why compensating people quickly and in a transparent way after a tragedy happens — matters.
The following conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
WLRN: Your son, Luke, was a freshman in high school when he was killed in the tragedy of 2018. Ever since, you've been the treasurer for the nonprofit Stand with Parkland, and that group advocates for safer schools. Why did you also want to volunteer to help distribute funds now, to victims families after the Surfside condo collapse?
HOYER: I think I can help these families navigate what's going to be a very surreal experience for them, which is the experience of trying to put a value on a deceased person or your injuries. And the emotions and the frustrations that come along with that.
Because I've been through it, I think I could help. Hopefully I can help them through that.
When did you know you wanted to get involved and help after Surfside?
Oh, you know, when it happened, the thing that struck my wife and I both, were when they started talking about the families going to a hotel basically to wait for news. That's exactly what we went through.
We went through hours of it. They went through days of it.
But there is nothing that can compare to that experience of coming to a slow realization of what the reality is, but like holding on to just the slimmest of hope that, you know, you're going to see your loved one come out alive.
What are important things to consider when there's a large donation fund like this that needs to get to people who are still in pain?
I think one of the most important things is to remember that money is really just kind of a proxy for, you know, value, if you will, just to be blunt.
You know, it's very hard to first go through a situation like this, where you lose somebody suddenly — you don't have a chance to say goodbye, there's loose ends, you know, a lot of reminders. And in the midst of all this, you know, you go through a process where essentially, you're trying to literally have a value on the person that you lost or the person that's injured.
It's a very, you know, kind of tough and emotional process to go through.
Another very important thing is people who lost somebody, suddenly, people who had somebody that was injured and people who were in the building and witnessed this but weren't physically injured, you know, they're kind of different levels of suffering, if you will.
How helpful is this money to survivors and families? What can they use it for?
For all of us and our families, I can speak about that. Most of us stopped working for a while. So you don't have a cash inflow necessarily, unless you've got a very generous company or very generous, kind of, short term sick leave policy or something like that. A lot of families don't have that.
So this gives them some time for the first weeks or months of grief without having the added stress of worrying about money. And that's — it means a lot to people that are in their situation, were in my situation.
The Surfside Steering Committee is working with The National Compassion Fund, and that agency also helped distribute money to victims families after the shooting in Parkland. What has working with them been like?
There's a lot of process. There's a lot of mechanics that go around the funds that are coming in, consolidating the funds that come in, rooting out the people that are trying to profit off this by setting up false competing funds, you know, things like that. And then somehow distributing the funds in a way that, you know, at least doesn't insult the families.
It was a big help to us when we went through it. And I know it'll be a big help to these families.
The [National] Compassion Fund brings a sense of process and purpose, and at the end of the day, some stability, to what would otherwise be a very chaotic kind of a process. It's unfortunate in a sense that they do, because that means they've been through many of these mass tragedy events.
One of the things that the National Compassion Fund does is they get it done pretty quickly. And so the key thing is, for us anyway, is early on when you are kind of suffering through the initial stages of losing somebody like that in a sudden tragic event — it's almost like having a concussion. I mean, you're kind of in a fog. You need some financial help at that point.
After Parkland, we saw a cry to make schools safer. And now after this condominium collapse, we're seeing a push to reevaluate whether we need to change building codes to make buildings safer. What role, if any, does a victims fund play in a push for change like this? Could victims family members use the money to start their own advocacy groups, or help fund lawsuits?
Absolutely. And that's exactly what happened in our situation.
What do you want the families of victims in this building collapse to know?
As it relates to the Compassion Fund and the steering committee, it's a group of people who have their interests at heart. We're going to try to help them through a very tough — what could be a very emotional — kind of a process.
On a personal level, what I want these people to know is that they're not alone. It sounds like a little bit of a cliche, but I can tell you, when this happens, you can kind of feel alone.
The people that we talked to, some of the deepest friendships we've built, are with the people that we have something in common with through the Parkland tragedy. And I would tell these families, stay in touch with them. Because, you know, three years on after our tragedy, we're still in close contact.
And in a weird way, it's the group that you feel most comfortable sitting around and having conversations about the tragedy — or anything else.
