Mark Rosenberg: Surfside Memories, One Year Later

SURFSIDE (By: Mark Rosenberg as told Exclusively to Sandy Eller/VINnews) –

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From the minute I got there, I knew it was 9/11 all over again.

My phone had rung at about 1:45 AM on the morning of June 24^th, with someone from Chesed Shel Emes telling me that a building had collapsed.

It didn’t make any sense to me – I said how do you know – and they told me that there was a woman running around Surfside with two daughters saying a building had collapsed.

They weren’t sure exactly where the collapse was – somewhere in the uppers 80s or lower 90s.  My daughter who had recently gotten married lived right in that area which made me very nervous, but I didn’t say a word to my wife, who thankfully, is used to me running out of the house.

I picked up Chesed Shel Emes supervisor Dovi Katz and headed to Surfside, not knowing at all what we were headed to.

It was quiet in Surfside when we got there. The police hadn’t come yet – there was just a long line of fire trucks on both sides of Harding and I didn’t see any sign of a collapse.

There was total silence and I couldn’t figure out what they were talking about till I got to the corner of 87^th. I saw the big pile of rubble, and as someone who was a first responder at Ground Zero, it was like being back at 9/11, only this time there were palm trees.

You know the smell.  You know the look.  Family portraits that had probably been hanging on someone’s walls just before I got there were laying scattered on the ground.

I took pictures of them and sent them to the Dade County Mayor’s office and the Miami Dade Police Department and other surrounding agencies so they could see what we were dealing with.

I also woke MDPD Chaplain Rabbi Yossi Harling and told him to get here fast. He didn’t ask much – just from the tone of my voice he understood that we were dealing with a crisis situation.

It didn’t take long until the eerie stillness gave way to chaos.

People came running, checking here and there to find out if their loved ones were in the building, hoping and praying that they were still alive.

We stood there with yellow legal pads taking down the names, and it was hard to get an exact idea of who we were looking for because sometimes we got nicknames duplicates.

The Miami Dade Fire Rescue was busy removing people from balconies and from what was left of the building, and from the first moment on, people hoping for pockets that might have formed during the collapse that might be keeping some of the victims alive.

As the night wore on, there was heavy machinery there and the situation was so unstable that we all knew we were risking our lives just standing there.

The collapse area still hadn’t been roped off yet when Miami Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava arrived at the scene at about 3 AM. She wanted to speak to the families, who were three long blocks away and while her staff wanted to call a car for her because it was raining, she had no intention of waiting for anyone or anything.

She ran to the families and ensured them that anything and everything would be done to find their loved ones at that time in the hopes of finding survivors, but by the time we did the first briefing at around 7 AM, it was obvious that many lives had been lost.

Seeing how many Jewish families were on the list at the briefing, the mayor turned to the first responders and told them that she doesn’t often speak about her heritage but that she is Jewish and knew that there are specific religious restrictions regarding how the deceased should be handled.

Mayor Levine explained that it was very important to her that everything be conducted in accordance with Jewish law and we were blown away realizing that we didn’t have to feel guilty or apologetic about our beliefs because trauma doesn’t check someone’s religion before it hits and neither does grief.

The mayor understood the importance of addressing the collapse with sensitivity and we appreciated how she made that clear from the very beginning of what turned out to be a very long search and rescue effort.

Things were a little more organized by the time daylight broke and even while we were in search and rescue mode, we had to be realistic and prepare for the worst.

In the back of our minds, we knew we had to consider issues like next of kin and getting DNA because it was clear that identifying victims was going to be a challenge in this situation.

Still, at this point in time, there wasn’t much we could do, because normally when Chesed Shel Emes is called in, we clean up the scene, take care of the deceased and do whatever we can for the family.

Here, we knew it would take time to get to that point and that things would be complicated when that happened, so for the time being, we did what we could as chaplains in the middle of a horrible nightmare.

There were people just walking the streets from the collapse site to the family center, asking us to give us any good news, or anything we could share.

It was an incredibly trying time – it wasn’t just family members breaking down, there were first responders and police officers falling apart as well.  Back at the collapse site, there were specialty dogs on the pile who were trained to sense live humans, while fire fighters were standing in chest high water mixed with gas under the building’s garage working with machinery while there was a smoldering fire burning the rubble.  You can’t even imagine what that smell was like.

We split our Chesed Shel Emes team up into several groups as the search effort continued.  We had one on watch at the collapse site with a second group assisting homicide to make sure that anything that could potentially have religious significance be treated with the proper respect.

Yet another group was assisting with identifications as much as possible, a job that got harder and harder with each passing day.

In truth, there was no way we could even know at that point who was Jewish and who wasn’t, so we treated everyone the same way – with the utmost dignity.

We also had people on the beach going through belongings that the fire department found in their search for survivors, piece by piece.  There were toys and seforim, taleisim and tefillin, mezuzos and kesubos, menorahs and Pesach coloring books.

At one point we found a pair of tefillin – the batim were soaked but we opened them up and the parshiyos were dry.  If we hadn’t done that on the spot they never could have been salvaged and who knows – maybe those parshiyos can be used one day for a grandson’s bar mitzvah.

Given the enormity of the tragedy, it wasn’t a surprise that things got moved up the chain of command pretty quickly, with the county stepping in and then being joined by the state, FEMA and the federal government, a situation that should have made our job considerably more difficult.

But instead of miles of red tape, our efforts were welcomed and as the site was tightly locked down into three separate zones, and I got a call asking me for a list of names to ensure that Chesed Shel Emes had full access to the entire site so that we could do whatever needed to be done.

MDPD Director Freddy Ramirez came over to me constantly offering his assistance and any time I needed anything, day or night, he got it done.  It was amazing to see how it was so important to him to be able to do everything in his power to help, and day after day he kept asking what he could do for the families.

I saw similar efforts made during the twice daily family briefings which were held at the Grand Beach Hotel.  Everyone was trying to protect family members from scammers and media and the family briefings were intended to be a safe haven for them so security was tight at the hotel.

Shabbos came pretty quickly, with the collapse taking place on a Thursday, and I was shocked to see how many people left the hotel on Friday night to light Shabbos candles at The Shul of Bal Harbour. I had originally assumed it would just be a handful of people going, but I was wrong – even people who might not have lit candles every week wanted to go because suddenly this hit home for them.

While some people came to the family briefings on Shabbos, others decided that they didn’t want to hear any bad news until after Shabbos was over.

The first Shabbos briefing was held on day three after the collapse and one woman whose parents were in the building asked how many people were found on the first day and the chief told her there were none.

Miami Dade Fire Rescue Chief Ray Jadallah at the memorial event.

She asked about the second day and the third day the answer was the same.  Turning to me she said, “Rabbi Rosenberg, what do we do if you find a little bit of my father or my mother – how long do I have to wait? I have four kids in Brooklyn waiting for me.”  It was at that point that we saw that people were finally starting to have yai’ush – despair – and were accepting that finding any survivors was becoming a real challenge.

There were so many people who remembered that survivors were found 28 days after the earthquake collapse in Haiti who weren’t giving up, but this was being a pancake collapse, it was clear that this was a very different situation and that the outlook was beyond bleak.

Mayor Levine Cava graciously did an additional briefing 10 PM briefing after Shabbos for those people who wanted to wait until after Shabbos to hear the latest update.

I went back to the hotel and saw some people sitting around talking and I told them that they were welcome to stay but that we were about to have a briefing for people of the Jewish faith who couldn’t come to the earlier briefing.  I was more than a little surprised when they told me that they had come with questions about saying Kaddish and sitting shiva because I had no idea that they were even Jewish.

I realized at that point that names didn’t matter and that not everyone who was Jewish was going to have a name like Rosenberg or Goldberg.

Ultimately it turned out that easily fifty to sixty percent of the people who died in the collapse were Jewish and even as the list of potential victims got shorter as time went on for a variety of reasons, the list of Jewish lives lost only seemed to get longer as time went by.

Hatzolah Air director Eli Rowe went above and beyond the call of duty, flying family members to Surfside and taking victims who didn’t live locally back to their home towns for burial, without asking for any payment, who they were, or if they were Jewish.

It was extremely difficult finding flights that would take the deceased, especially since we were still dealing with COVID restrictions and having his two planes going back and forth, all day and all night, was a huge comfort for the families who just wanted to bring their loved ones home for a proper and timely burial.

And of course, the discussion arose about the families as days went by and whether or not we should we take them to the site.  People were worried about what would happen and how they would react when they got there, but Miami Dade Fire Rescue Chief Ray Jadallah felt that it would help tremendously and after getting the go ahead from the mayor’s office and mental health professionals, he decided to bring them.

It was a controlled situation with no media allowed and there was complete quiet as they got off the buses, but then the screams started breaking out.  You had one person yelling “Tatty!”  Another yelling “Mommy!” There was a 12 year old girl who wanted to go a little closer and I told her it was dangerous but she was convinced her father was waving from the window of her 11^th floor apartment which was still partially intact.

Search and Rescue Fire Chief Brandon Webb noticed that this young girl was insistent on something  and when I told him what she wanted, he brought her over to a place where should clearly see her apartment. She sat there on a central air conditioning unit saying Tehillim and she wasn’t the only one davening there. There were families who wouldn’t leave – they just sat there on the floor saying Tehillim.

The days and weeks that followed were beyond comprehension.  People would ask us if we had any news, and when we, did I tried to follow the policy of always being honest and respectful, even when it was painful.

Most of the time the families understand what you are trying not to tell them and they shake their head, that shake telling you that they understood, though you give the specifics to those who want them.

In some ways, the waiting for news is almost like watching for your luggage to come out at the airport baggage carousel – it goes around and around and eventually most of the people leave but you are still standing there.

There were times when people were upset with us that we were there at the family briefings and other occasions when they were upset with us that we hadn’t come.  There was the terrible moment when I watched firefighters pull the seven year old daughter of one of their own out of the rubble, total silence enveloping the scene as he covered her with his jacket.

There was the time I had to tell the mother of a 21 year old Russian-Jewish woman who had stopped in Florida for a single night that their daughter’s remains had been found.  Her parents had come in and couldn’t accept at first that their daughter, their precious gem, might be gone, and she was one of the last to be identified.

But they were so desperate to find out what had happened to her that when I finally broke the news to them, her mother started to cry, telling me, “Thank you for bringing me the best news a mother could ever receive.” It was incredibly moving to see how the worst possible news had become the best news ever, because now she would finally have the opportunity to tuck her daughter away properly for burial.

There was so much intensity during those 30 days we spent in Surfside but crying and showing emotion only mean that you have a big heart and those of us who were there felt guilty going home.

How could we eat, sleep and laugh knowing what was there in that pile? We felt guilty hugging our children or just sitting in an air conditioned room knowing there were people working 12 hour shifts in the heat and some individuals who went home came back early because they just felt that they belonged there, doing their part.

As first responders, we know we have a job to do, but sometimes the crisis is bigger than the job, and although we signed up for anything and everything, no one ever signs up for something like this.

Governor DeSantis checked in with me every day without fail to make sure that everything was going well and I felt like I lived with him for an entire month.

We saw firsthand the value of having police chaplains at a crisis scene, as we supported friends and family members and were there as well for first responders and members of law enforcement, because everyone at that pile who was having difficulty coping with the devastating loss of life.

The many relationships we have built over the years were a lifesaver, with the governor and senators helping us out when we realized that people who picked up the remains of a loved one sign a release, which meant under Florida law that any future remains that were found might not be returned to them.

The law was changed for us on the spot and we had new forms created that would allow family members to indicate that they wanted to be contacted if anything new turned up.  We had elected officials and others going to bat for us as well dealing with passports and related issues because of the many COVID travel restrictions were still in place at the time.

Through the years, I have spent considerable amounts of time explaining to people what Chesed Shel Emes does, but all of a sudden, our work seemed very normal to people who weren’t even Jewish.

We have three goals that we always try to accomplish – getting the deceased buried as quickly as possible, in entirety, and without an autopsy. In this case, the fact that we couldn’t do those things right away was agonizing and extremely painful but over time we did them for every victim we found.  Who didn’t want their loved one back in one piece, fast and with nothing further done to them?

We had priests and ministers telling us that the halacha made sense and non-Jewish television stations who interviewed me were very interested in our work because, Jewish or not, when a building collapses and there isn’t much left, people will take anything you can bury, cherish, laminate or seal.

For 30 days, we were all on red alert.  Surfside became our home, our office, our family, our shul. Rain didn’t matter. Winds didn’t matter. Hurricanes didn’t matter. All you did was run and run and the days and nights went by again and again. Somehow, we got through it and it’s hard to believe that a year has gone by.

At least when you lose someone who was sick and in the hospital, you know you did what you could for them, but here there was no closure for the family members.

So many of us who were at Surfside formed unbreakable relationships and we have stayed in touch, although we all got used to not speaking about what happened there. And much like the days that led up to the 9/11 anniversary were extremely emotional, things were very intense here as June 24^th loomed.

I did my first interview recently with CBS Miami, although we had to stop in the middle because the reporter broke down and I went back to the collapse site for the first time last Monday with some of the chiefs.  We were all happy to see each other, but things got very quiet when we went out onto the gravel and everyone had their sunglasses on to hide the tears that we knew were going to fall.

I didn’t see gravel when I stood once again on the spot where the building once was.  I saw the chaos. I saw people standing on piles. I saw things being pulled out.  Sitting outside at the collapse site for the memorial just a few days later on June 24^th, I didn’t feel the heat, even though we were out there for three hours –  I didn’t feel anything because it was nothing compared to what we went through.  I told people – do you see those green bushes? They were white when I got here. The sidewalk was white. The cars were white.

Being back there just brings back bad feelings.  No matter how hard you try, you just cannot imagine what we see when we go there.

Rabbi Mark Rosenberg, is Director of the CSE Florida. Chaplain Florida State Troopers Patrol, and Miami-Dade Police Dept.