In Miami Area Collapse, Echoes of 9/11 in the Grief and Rubble

Some who recall the early days following the World Trade Center catastrophe say the reports and images from Florida are almost too familiar.

Rescue workers navigating the dusty rubble moonscape. News conferences offering little encouragement. Photographs of missing loved ones assembled in a sudden memorial shrine. The anger. The grief. The faint hope ceding to sorrowful acceptance. The middle-of-the-night collapse of the Champlain Towers South apartment building in South Florida last week was a tragedy apart from any other, with its own distinct circumstances, its own affected community. This was not a terrorist attack in Lower Manhattan; this was an apparent structural failure in Surfside, Fla. Still, for anyone who recalls the fresh days following the World Trade Center catastrophe — 20 years ago this September — the reports and images from Surfside are almost too familiar, no matter that the Champlain building was roughly one-tenth the height of the 110-story twin towers. The two events are bound by the human and technical rhythms of disaster.