NORTH MIAMI BEACH, Fla. – Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle was at the Crestview Towers Condominiums on Wednesday as moving trucks pulled up for residents who are getting their belongings out of the evacuated building. Meanwhile, North Miami Beach’s chief of police said that they are looking into concerns and allegations made by residents that there may have been some misappropriation of funds by the condo association.
While Rundle stopped short of explaining why she was there, she did discuss the grand jury that’s now been impaneled in the wake of Surfside. “They are interested. And seeing if there were things that could be done, laws that should be changed, for instance. How do we prevent in the future Surfside happening.
The statement read, in part:
“Today, in addressing the members of the Spring Term Miami-Dade County Grand Jury, I requested, pending the conclusion of the long-term investigation that will yield the cause of the collapse, that they look into how we can prevent such a disaster from occurring again, not just in Surfside, and not just in condominiums, but in all buildings and structures in the coastal, intercoastal and surrounding areas of our county, state and nation. The members of the Grand Jury enthusiastically agreed to accept this challenge and voted in favor of conducting such an investigation.”
Meanwhile, North Miami Beach Mayor Anthony DeFillipo was on site Wednesday and said many of the residents want to just move on and step away from Crestview for good.
“People do want to get on with their lives. They are tired of feeling this discomplacement that they have in their lives,” he said.
Starting Monday, residents will be given more time to remove larger items like furniture from their unit and people can start making appointments to do that right away.
One resident told Local 10 that residents were told to call a number, but it was a number to the building itself and no one answered the phone.
According to the mayor, engineers are currently working on the building and there’s no timeline for when it will reopen. He said the faster the condo association complies with the fire code violations, the faster the doors can reopen