US President Joe Biden gave remarks on Thursday during his visit to Surfside, Miami, where a building collapsed last week.
The President said that the families of the victims in the collapse were “realistic” about the rescue effort.
“When I talked to some of the families and some of the people who did escape, they talked about watching the building collapse and watching a whole floor come down on another floor. They know that the chances, as each day goes by, diminish slightly. But at a minimum, they want to recover the bodies,” said Biden.
“There are a lot of religious people there. Rabbis and members of the Jewish community. We’re talking about the need to ensure that they recover the body and are able to bury them. I think they’re very realistic, but I don’t think that that in any way suggests that we should stop. I think that we should move on and continue and try to recover the bodies,” he added.
Biden said the visit brought up many memories for him, noting that losing part of his family in a car accident also involved a period of waiting.
“It’s bad enough to lose somebody, but the hard part, the really hard part, is to not know whether they’re surviving or not,” he said. “When the accident took my wife and my family, the hardest part was were my boys going to get out, were they going to make it. And just not knowing,” he said.
Biden added that the families had “basic heart wrenching questions” like seeking closure without a burial of their loved one if their body is not recovered.
“We’re here for you as one nation, as one nation, and that’s the message we communicated,” he stated.