SURFSIDE, Fla. – Monday marks three years since the Champlain Towers South building collapsed in Surfside, killing 98 people.
At 1:22 a.m., the names of all of the victims killed were read aloud -- the same time the building collapsed, Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Chief Ray Jadallah said.
“Reading out the 98 names -- it’s not just names,” he said. “These are extended family that we made over the past three years.”
At 9:45 a.m., a memorial flyover took place in which a Miami-Dade Police Department helicopter circled the scene of the collapse.
WATCH THE FLYOVER BELOW:
A remembrance ceremony, led by Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett, followed the flyover right next to the site, with a rabbi also reflecting on the third anniversary with a prayer service.
“It feels unreal that it’s already three years. You never expect to be in this position, see these things on camera. You see these tragedies occur, you never expect your family to go through something like this,” Martin Langesfeld said.
Langesfeld lost his 26-year-old sister, Nicole, in the collapse. Her husband also died in the collapse.
“Nikki to me was everything,” Martin Langesfeld said. “I would go to her for answers. She was my role model, and Louis was the man she chose to be with for the rest of her life. I saw him as an older brother as well.”
Martin Langesfeld spoke at Monday’s ceremony, giving a moving plea to the public officials in attendance to work with him on installing a new memorial at the location.
Another man, Mike Noriega, lost his grandmother in the collapse.
“To fathom that this woman, who was the matriarch of our family, was underneath there -- that was almost impossible to accept. It couldn’t be true, but it was,” he said Monday morning, prior to the remembrance ceremony. “A building on flat land where there’s no earthquakes, collapses in the middle of the night? That should never happen.”
The victims’ families lit a torch at 1:22 a.m. to honor their loved ones.
While a final determination is still years away, a preliminary report released by investigators last year identified a severe strength deficiency in the building’s pool deck —likely caused by a design flaw when the building was constructed in the early 1980′s.
The site itself has since been sold to a billionaire developer from Dubai who plans to build a new tower on the property.
The move is not sitting well with some of the victim’s families who are pushing to install a permanent memorial on the very same site.
Town officials are now looking to put that memorial on public land adjacent to the property with a final location and design plan having yet to be announced.