WASHINGTON — The White House Situation Room only sends out alerts in the middle of the night to wake up top officials when a significant event in the world requires an immediate government response. The collapse of Champlain Towers South in Surfside was one of those nights.
Shortly after the condo building collapsed around 1:25 a.m. on June 24, senior officials on the National Security Council were woken to the news. It led their morning report to senior staff and prompted feverish, predawn calls with leadership at the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Department of Homeland Security to activate aid, according to three White House officials familiar with the events of that day.
By 8:30 a.m., during FEMA’s morning operations call, administration officials were directing federal urban search and rescue teams to get to the scene of what turned out to be one of the worst building failures in U.S. history that left 98 people dead.
