MIAMI — Families of the victims in the Surfside condo collapse will gather at the exact time and site of the tragedy on June 24 for a memorial event on the one-year anniversary of the Champlain Towers South disaster.
The private gathering will be held around 1:22 a.m. — the moment the 12-story condo building collapsed. With candles and flowers in hand, they plan to meet on the now-barren plot of land at 8777 Collins Ave.
“We lost 98 people, we need to remember those people forever,” said Pablo Langesfeld, whose 26-year-old daughter Nicole Langesfeld and son-in-law Luis Sadovnic, 28, died in the collapse.
The memorial will be part of a daylong anniversary event that will include a second, daytime event at the collapse site open to family members, survivors, first responders and politicians. In the evening, the family members plan to gather for another private event at a nearby hotel.
The details and logistics of the anniversary event are still being finalized with the town of Surfside, but a newly formed family committee created by the town to organize the event met Wednesday evening to begin discussing plans.
At that meeting, Yadira Santos, who survived the collapse with her young son, cried as she called for unity between family members and survivors. Tension between both groups has grown in the months since the collapse amid legal disputes over financial payouts.
“I am heartbroken for the lives that are lost,” Santos said. “I think it’s time to unite instead of being families of the deceased versus survivors.”
Survivors will be given a chance to speak during the daytime event at the collapse site but the early-morning and evening events would be only for families of the victims and invited guests of the families.
Chana Ainsworth, a member of the committee whose parents, Ingrid and Tzvi Ainsworth, died in the collapse, said she knows that survivors experienced loss of homes and neighbors and trauma from the disaster, but the families needed a moment for themselves.
“We lost actual people and we’re going there to remember them and to honor them,” she said.
Suggestions for the event include projecting a light beam from the collapse site, creating an exhibit space in downtown Surfside with mementos preserved from the former Champlain Towers memorial wall, and lining the boardwalk behind the collapse site with the white wooden crosses — bearing the names of the victims — that were previously at the memorial wall.
HistoryMiami Museum took responsibility for dismantling the memorial wall on Harding Avenue and preserving the mementos that could be salvaged after sustaining rain damage. Town officials will meet with museum representatives next week to discuss the possibility of displaying the items, ranging from stuffed animals to posters.
Some family members will also receive personal belongings recovered from the collapse site if the items can be linked to a specific person, according to a spokeswoman for Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.
A temporary banner will be installed along the fence of the collapse site honoring the victims. The land is slated to be sold to a private developer. Surfside commissioners voted to designate the end of 88th Street adjacent to the property as a site for a permanent memorial.
The family committee is expected to discuss the memorial at future meetings, but they received a brief presentation from artists Roger Abramson and Julia Balk of a proposal for an obelisk made out of seashells to honor the victims of the collapse.
