At least one person was killed after a high-rise building near Miami Beach partially collapsed early Thursday morning, authorities said. Ten or more were injured — and as of 8:30 p.m., 99 remain unaccounted for, according to Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.

At an evening news conference, officials said crews will work through the night — on 12-hour shifts — as the search for victims continues.

Earlier in the day, Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett confirmed the one known fatality, telling CNN that “This is a horrific catastrophe. In the United States, buildings just don’t fall down."

Scores of rescue units rushed to scene in the minutes after the collapse, and firefighters were seen pulling survivors from the concrete debris.

Miami-Dade County officials say 102 residents of the building have been accounted for, with at least 35 rescued from the building building itself. An additional two were pulled from the rubble.

Miami-Dade police said 99 people were unaccounted for as of early Thursday evening. Families showing up at a local reunification center to get information were being briefed.

"My prayers are with all those impacted by this horrific tragedy and with their families," Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava wrote on Twitter, expressing her gratitude to the rescuers who were working to save lives.

Cava said she signed an emergency order, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a state-of-emergency order late Thursday. That would free up President Biden to sign an emergency declaration that provides FEMA support.

Santo Mejil, 50, told the Miami Herald his wife called him from the building, where she was working as an aide for an elderly woman.

“She said she heard a big explosion. It felt like an earthquake,” Mejil told the newspaper. He said she later called him and said rescuers were bringing her down.

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue was conducting search and rescue operations, and said in a tweet that more than 80 units were “on scene with assistance from municipal fire departments.”

“We’re on the scene so it’s still very active,” said Sgt. Marian Cruz of the Surfside Police Department. “What I can tell you is the building is twelve floors. The entire back side of the building has collapsed.”

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Cohen, who lives nearby, told television station WPLG the building had been undergoing a major renovation when the ocean front wing “collapsed like a pancake.”

Teams of firefighters walked through the rubble, picking up survivors and carrying them from the wreckage.

Then, using sonar, they began to shift search and rescue efforts to areas beneath the rubble, including in the area of a parking garage. They are now tunneling through the rubble slowly, watching for shifts in the building or the rubble. 

At one point, a shift revealed a small fire, which had to be extinguished. 

This stage of the search will continue through the night Thursday.

Officials have yet to say what may have caused the collapse. A Florida International University professor detected sinking ground on the site of the 12-story building in the 1990s, according to a Thursday report on the university’s website that cited a 2020 study.

But FIU Institute of Environment Professor Shimon Wdowinski said land subsidence, as it’s called, likely wouldn’t alone cause a building’s collapse. Wdowinksi based his study on an analysis of space-based radar and thinks researchers could use the same technology to detect vulnerable buildings, the report said.

The collapse left a number of units in the still-standing part of the building exposed. Television footage showed bunk beds, tables and chairs still left inside the damaged apartments. Air conditioning units were hanging from some parts of the building, where wires now dangled.

Law enforcement blocked nearby roads, and scores of fire and rescue vehicles, ambulances and police cars swarmed the area.

The debris from the collapse coated cars up to two blocks away with a light layer of dust.

Photos and video from the scene show the collapse affected half the tower. Piles of rubble and debris surrounded the area just outside the building.

"TV doesn't do it justice. It is really, really traumatic to see the collapse of a massive structure like that," said DeSantis after being updated on the situation.

The sea-view condo development was built in 1981 in the southeast corner of Surfside, on the beach. It had a few two-bedroom units on the market, with asking prices of $600,000 to $700,000.

The building had more than 130 units, according to Miami-Dade Fire Rescue, and about half of those collapsed.

The area is a mix of new and old apartments, houses, condominiums and hotels, with restaurants and stores serving an international combination of residents and tourists. The community provides a stark contrast from bustle and glitz of South Beach with a slower paced neighborhood feel.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. Spectrum News digital reporter Pete Reinwald also contributed.

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