Widow of man missing in Miami collapse begs officials to stop talk of rebuilding, calling it ‘desecration’

A Florida judge has already allowed the sale of the Surfside condo property

It has been over 20 days since Brad Cohen and Gary Cohen lost their lives in the collapse of Champlain Tower South. While Gary’s body was recovered last Thursday, the police have only recovered Brad’s ring and car.

Three weeks after the collapse, his wife Soriya Cohen has also lost hope of finding him alive, yet says she is deeply disturbed by talk of rebuilding new homes in the place where the 12-storey residential block stood.

“I can’t imagine such a desecration,” Ms Cohen was quoted as saying by WLPG. “Imagine if that was your spouse, your parent or your grandparent and to make money, they built on top of it.”

For her, the site is nothing short of a cemetery. She said that her husband followed Jewish law which deeply respects the burial site of the dead. “He loved god and he feared god. And the halachic is about proper burial and cemeteries, it certainly should apply to him,” she said.

“And I am asking everybody to respect that and respect the families and people who have already suffered or lost so much and not to add to their pain.

"It’s almost like a mourning process or a Shiva process that goes on and on and on, but yet you didn’t have the funeral," Ms Cohen added. "I’m not even 100 per cent sure he is going to be found because they looked in his apartment and they only found his brother."

While families of some of the deceased have called for the creation of a memorial across the Surfside site, others want the structure to be rebuilt so that they can move back in, and there has been talk of having only a partial memorial at the site alongside the new homes.

Meanwhile, a Florida judge has already allowed the sale of the Surfside condo property to go ahead.

The court also appointed attorney Michael Goldberg to handle the finances related to the condo. In an interview with USA Today, Mr Goldberg said that the judge wants “the land to be sold and the proceeds to go directly to the victims as soon as possible”.

He said the court’s order does not prevent the buyer from turning a portion of the property into a memorial site. Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava had earlier supported the creation of a memorial.

“We definitely need a memorial,” she told reporters on 13 June. “Exactly where it will be is going to be determined.”

A Change.org petition calling for the site to be turned into a memorial has received more than 1,200 signatures.