In the heavy, pre-dawn stillness of Wednesday morning, a quiet crowd gathered at Veterans Park in Surfside. They came to mark a grim and tragic milestone: five years since the sudden and catastrophic collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominium building.
The vigil began just after 1 a.m., exactly opposite the vacant lot where the 12-story building once stood. At 1:15 a.m. — the precise moment the structure pancaked to the ground on June 24, 2021 — a flame was lit to honor the 98 lives lost in one of the worst structural engineering disasters in U.S. history.
As police and fire vehicles lined the surrounding streets, their flashing lights cutting through the darkness, Miami-Dade fire officials read aloud the names of the 98 individuals who perished. Family members, some weeping softly and holding candles, embraced one another as the roll call echoed through the park.
For the first responders present, the ceremony was a solemn reminder of the grueling, weeks-long search-and-recovery mission in the summer of 2021, where crews sifted through millions of pounds of rubble composed of concrete and steel.
READ MORE: Five years after the Surfside condo collapse, a look back at the tragedy
Among those speaking was Deven Gonzalez, who was just 16 years old when her world was shattered. Gonzalez and her mother were pulled from the wreckage by Miami-Dade Fire Rescue. Her father did not survive.
“It was like any other night and then obviously the condo collapsed and I woke up in the rubble,” Gonzalez said.
Now 21, Gonzalez shared that while she is still physically healing from the injuries she sustained that night, the emotional healing is an ongoing, lifelong process. She vowed to remain a pillar of support for the grieving families who surround her.
“To me, they were more than neighbors. They were family,” Gonzalez said.
Hallowed ground, uncertain futures
The collapsed condo building at Surfside prompted sweeping changes to Florida’s building safety laws, forcing statewide reforms in condo inspections and financial reserve requirements. Federal investigators reported Monday that two connections between garage columns and the pool deck started to fail weeks before the building’s collapse.
For the families left behind, the battleground has shifted to the very earth where their loved ones died.
While a black memorial wall currently bears the names of the victims, a permanent monument on the actual site of the collapse remains controversial.
The oceanfront property was purchased by a billionaire developer with plans to construct an ultra-luxury residential tower on the site — a stark contrast to the sacred ground many families had hoped to preserve entirely for remembrance. The Wall Street Journal reported that no condo has been sold to date.
As the morning darkness began to fade on Wednesday morning, the collection of guests slowly began trickling away from Veterans Park. Meanwhile, the fire at the memorial remained lit and a heart-shaped bundle of yellow roses sat at its base — a lasting reminder that what happened in Surfside five years ago is not forgotten.
The story was originally published by Caplin News, a publication of FIU's Lee Caplin School of Journalism & Media, as part of an editorial content partnership with the WLRN newsroom.
