SURFSIDE – Friday morning dozens of family and friends gathered at the Surfside building collapse site for a moment of silence. The moment of silence happened at 1:22 a.m., the time part of the Champlain Towers South collapsed.
Michael Noriega spoke with CBS4 as he was leaving the private event. He told us it was a moment of reverence. Noriega lost his grandmother Hilda in the collapse.
Noriega said despite the moment of silence you could hear people crying in the background. Each family lit a torch for each of the 98 lives lost, in the order they were identified.
“Each torch was lined up in front of the actual collapse side. So we were facing it and it was a combination of honoring our loved ones but also taking in the reality of the situation that they are no longer with us. There was a lot of tears, a lot of heartbreak, and a lot of people that were actually here for the first time ever taking it in,” he said.
