SURFSIDE, Fla. – The newly elected mayor of Surfside is making the town’s response to the deaths of 98 people in the collapse of an oceanfront condominium a top priority in his new administration.
Mayor Shlomo Danzinger has called a special meeting of the town commission on Tuesday to discuss the Champlain Towers collapse.
He wants to mark the one-year anniversary of the collapse in June, create a memorial to the victims and install signage to remember the lives lost.
He says it’s the town’s responsibility.
Danzinger defeated former mayor Charles Burkett in this month’s election.
‘Kind of a burial site’
Rabbi Sholom Lipskar, of The Shul of Bal Harbour, said the anniversary of a person’s death and the area “where souls left their bodies” is of great significance.
“We need physical elements to help us bridge between our emotions and reality,” Lipskar said.
Oren Cytrynbaum, a former resident of Champlain Towers South, survived because he wasn’t home when the building partially collapsed. He wants the memorial to be where the victims’ families want it to be. Danzinger agrees.
" I felt that the decision of what should be there, where it should be, should be left to the family members, we are trying to put them at the forefront of these decisions as these proposals come through,” Danzinger said adding, “This is kind of a burial site.”