MIAMI — After escaping the Champlain Towers South moments before it collapsed last summer, Ileana Monteagudo says she has been trying to rebuild her life at age 65 with no savings and lingering anxiety from the Surfside disaster.
She expects to receive about $610,000 from an initial settlement that the 136 unit owners of the condo building agreed to in March as part of a class-action lawsuit. But after seeing the total settlement amount in the case grow last week to nearly $1 billion — largely reserved for family members of the 98 people who died in the collapse — Monteagudo said she wants a bigger share of the money to help her buy a house and move on with her life.
“We are also victims,” Monteagudo said Wednesday. “We survived but we were left with nothing. We are elderly and we are left with nothing.”
