Posts

Florida Condo Declared Unsafe Amid New Building Scrutiny

/0 Comments/in , /by

Residents of a Florida condo were told they should leave their homes Wednesday after local officials declared parts of the property “unsafe,” a report said.

Walkways could crumble at the three-building complex in Kissimmee, outside of Orlando, the Osceola County Building Department warned 72 residents on Wednesday, Fox 35 Orlando reported.

The alert came after an engineering report and amid heightened scrutiny across the country over potential hazards of deteriorating infrastructure sparked by the deadly condo collapse in Surfside, Fla.

“Osceola County acted quickly in the best interest of public safety by declaring the structures unsafe on Wednesday morning, which was an immediate action after it learned of the engineering report performed on behalf of the Condominium Association/management company,” county spokesman Mark Pino told the TV station. (Read more from “Florida Condo Declared Unsafe Amid New Building Scrutiny” HERE)

Delete Facebook, Delete Twitter, Follow Restoring Liberty and Joe Miller at gab HERE.

Eerie: Family of Couple Missing In Florida Condo Collapse Still Getting Calls

/1 Comment/in , /by

The family of the Florida grandparents missing in the aftermath of the Surfside building collapse told The Post Tuesday they are still getting mysterious phone calls from the couple’s landline — at least 20 since the catastrophe.

Dianne Ohayon said the family’s latest sliver of hope came early Monday, when her younger sister received a call from their parents, Myriam and Arnie Notkin.

“They’re coming in every day,” Ohayon, 56, said of the eerie calls.

“The last one I have knowledge about was Monday morning, a call came in at about 5:30 a.m. It was static. It’s the same thing every time.” (Read more from “Eerie: Family of Couple Missing In Florida Condo Collapse Still Getting Calls” HERE)

Delete Facebook, Delete Twitter, Follow Restoring Liberty and Joe Miller at gab HERE.

Authorities Recover Tenth Body Following Florida Condo Collapse

/1 Comment/in , /by

A tenth body was recovered Monday, with 151 people still remaining unaccounted for on the fifth day of ongoing search and rescue efforts in Surfside, Florida.

As of Monday, ten people were confirmed dead as the result of the disaster, bringing the total number of the missing to 151, according to The Associated Press (AP).

Although no survivors have been recovered from the rubble of the collapsed condominium since Thursday, the officials are committed to exhausting “every possible option in our search,” Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said Monday, AP reported.

(Read more from “Authorities Recover Tenth Body Following Florida Condo Collapse” HERE)

Delete Facebook, Delete Twitter, Follow Restoring Liberty and Joe Miller at gab HERE.

Shocking Details: Developers of Doomed Tower Were Once Accused of Paying off Officials; Survivor Describes Anguished Cries of Trapped Neighbors; Florida Residents Were Told Condo Was Safe Despite MAJOR Issues

/0 Comments/in , , /by

By New York Post. The developers of the Miami condo tower that collapsed were once accused of paying off local officials to get permits for the site — which needed $15 million in repairs just to bring it to code, a new report says.

Building rivals claimed that the partners behind Surfside Champlain Towers South were receiving preferential treatment when it came to getting through the permit system as the site was being built in 1981, the Washington Post said.

Surfside’s developers had contributed to the campaigns of at least two town-council members, then demanded that the donations be returned when the allegations surfaced, according to the outlet.

Meanwhile, the 12-story tower had been on the verge of undergoing $15 million in renovations to pass a required 40-year certification when it collapsed, killing at least nine people and leaving more than 150 unaccounted for Thursday, the report added. (Read more from “Developers of Doomed Tower Were Once Accused of Paying off Officials” HERE)

__________________________________________________________________

Florida Tower Survivor Describes Anguished Cries of Trapped Neighbors

By New York Post. A resident of the collapsed condo tower recalled to The Post on Sunday how he could hear his terrified neighbors screaming, “Help me! Get me out!” as the structure crumbled around them.

Steve Rosenthal, 72, said he first heard the “largest thunderclap” of his life around 1:30 in the morning Thursday.

“Five seconds later, the bed and the room start shaking. I figure OK, I am dreaming,” said Rosenthal, who works in advertising and entertainment, outside a Marriott hotel in Miami Beach set up for the tower’s evacuees.

Then dust started pouring down from his ceiling, so Rosenthal ran into the hallway. There he saw the hall ceiling caved in and heard the cries from his neighbors.

“I hear people yelling, ‘Help me! Help me! Get me out!’” Rosenthal recalled. (Read more from “Florida Tower Survivor Describes Anguished Cries of Trapped Neighbors” HERE)

__________________________________________________________________

Report: Florida Residents Were Told Condo Was Safe Despite MAJOR Issues

By NPR. Just one month after an engineering report warned of “major structural damage” that required immediate repair, a Surfside, Fla. official assured residents of Chaplain Towers South that their building was sound.

NPR has obtained minutes of a Nov. 2018 meeting that shows a Surfside town inspector met with residents of the building, and assured them the building was “in very good shape.” NPR learned of the meeting from a resident who was in attendance and who in an interview with Weekend Edition recalled being told that the building was not in danger.

The inspector’s comments directly conflicted with an engineering report from five weeks earlier, which warned that failed waterproofing in a concrete structural slab needed to be replaced “in the near future.” (Read more from “Report: Florida Residents Were Told Condo Was Safe Despite MAJOR Issues” HERE)

Delete Facebook, Delete Twitter, Follow Restoring Liberty and Joe Miller at gab HERE.

Shocking: Law Lets Government Vaccinate Unwilling ‘by Any Means Necessary’

/0 Comments/in , , /by

A new Florida law that prevents companies and organizations operating there from requiring “vaccine passports,” that documentation that purports to prove an individual has been vaccinated for COVID-19, also has a stinger: a provision allowing the government to force vaccinations on people.

The paragraph in the state’s 2nd engrossed version of SB 2006, an “act relating to emergency management” and more, states: “If the individual poses a danger to the public health, the State Health Officer may subject the individual to isolation or quarantine. If there is no practical method to isolate or quarantine the individual, the State Health Officer may use any means necessary to vaccinate or treat the individual.”

The fight over mandatory vaccinations still is developing in the U.S., following the pandemic that apparently got its start in Wuhan, China, and flooded the world, killing some 600,000 people in just the United States.

Some private organizations have demanded employees be vaccinated, and fired those refusing, and a number of legal cases have developed from those demands. Governments to this point have been encouraging – even bribing – citizens to take vaccines, but have not yet been to the point of forcing them.

The Florida provision comes in a portion of the law setting the agenda for state officials, when a public health emergency is declared, to identify and document cases and deaths. (Read more from “Shocking: Law Lets Government Vaccinate Unwilling ‘by Any Means Necessary'” HERE)

Delete Facebook, Delete Twitter, Follow Restoring Liberty and Joe Miller at gab HERE.

WATCH: Awkward Moment VP Harris Reminds Biden About Deadly Florida Condo Collapse; Security Footage Shows Condo Being Pelted With Debris Moments Before Collapse

/0 Comments/in , , /by

By New York Post. . .Vice President Kamala Harris appeared to remind President Biden to mention the deadly South Florida condo collapse before leaving a White House event Thursday.

Biden had given remarks on infrastructure and taken questions from the press on that issue as well as voting rights. He then attempted to wrap up by telling reporters “I’ve got to get to a helicopter” before Harris approached.

The president and vice president exchanged a brief, whispered conversation that concluded with Harris saying, “Florida, yeah.”

“Oh, yes. I apologize,” Biden said, turning back to the microphone as Harris retreated out of camera view. “Yes, thank you, Madame Vice President.”

(Read more from “WATCH: Awkward Moment VP Harris Reminds Biden About Deadly Florida Condo Collapse” HERE)

_________________________________________________________________

Florida Condo Collapse: At Least 1 Dead, Nearly 100 Unaccounted For

By USA Today. Nearly 100 people remain unaccounted for Friday morning, a day after a 12-story beachfront condominium building just north of Miami collapsed, killing at least one person.

A wing of the residential building in Surfside, Florida, came down with a roar around 1:30 a.m. Thursday. On video footage captured from nearby, the center of the building appeared to fall first, with a section nearest the ocean teetering and coming down seconds later as a huge dust cloud swallowed the neighborhood.

Fire Rescue personnel and others worked through the night Thursday in hopes of finding survivors.

Early Friday, President Joe Biden declared a state of emergency authorizing funding and other disaster relief to Surfside, a small, tight-knit community with about 6,000 residents.

Residents screamed for help as they sought to flee the building , and some were plucked from the building by firefighters using ladders. Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett confirmed that at least one person had died but warned the death toll was likely to rise. (Read more from “Florida Condo Collapse: At Least 1 Dead, Nearly 100 Unaccounted For” HERE)

_________________________________________________________________

Security Footage Shows Florida Condo Being Pelted With Debris Moments Before Collapse

By New York Post. A resident of the partially collapsed 12-story beachfront Florida condo shared dramatic home security footage of her apartment, seconds before the building gave way.

Rosie Santana’s life was likely spared because she was not at her condo at the moment of collapse Thursday morning, the woman tweeted.

White hail-like debris from the collapsing structure can be seen and heard pelting her living room, before the camera abruptly went dark after 13 seconds.

“I am a resident of one of the condos on the side of the collapse,” Santana wrote, less than three hours after the 1:30 a.m. catastrophe.

(Read more from “Security Footage Shows Florida Condo Being Pelted With Debris Moments Before Collapse” HERE)

Delete Facebook, Delete Twitter, Follow Restoring Liberty and Joe Miller at gab HERE.

Yuck! Parents Send Kids’ Masks to Lab for Analysis

/1 Comment/in , , /by

A group of Florida parents concerned about the potential harm of wearing masks during the school day sent their children’s face coverings to a lab for analysis.

“We need to know what we are putting on the faces of our children each day. Masks provide a warm, moist environment for bacteria to grow,” said a parent who participated in the analysis, Amanda Donoho.

Of the six masks that were examined, five were contaminated with bacteria, parasites and fungi, noted Scott Morefield of Townhall.com. Three of the masks had dangerous pathogenic and pneumonia-causing bacteria.

No viruses were detected on the masks, although the test is capable of detecting them. (Read more from “Yuck! Parents Send Kids’ Masks to Lab for Analysis” HERE)

Delete Facebook, Delete Twitter, Follow Restoring Liberty and Joe Miller at gab HERE.

Florida Governor To Send Officers to Southern Border

/0 Comments/in , /by

Florida will send its own law enforcement officers to the U.S.-Mexico border to assist federal, state, and local police responding to the border crisis in Arizona and Texas, where the governors have asked every other state to send in reinforcements.

“We are the first state to commit support for this effort in response to the request that was submitted by the governors of Texas and Arizona, and we’re proud to lead, yet again, on issues that matter to Floridians,” Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Wednesday afternoon.

Officers from the Florida Highway Patrol, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, Brevard County Sheriff’s Office, Escambia County Sheriff’s Office, Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, Holmes County Sheriff’s Office, Lee County Sheriff’s Office, Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office, Pasco County Sheriff’s Office, Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office, and Walton County Sheriff’s Office will head roughly 1,000 miles west to the southern border. The Florida Division of Emergency Management will oversee the deployments.

“You have a governor who is saying we’ll step up to protect Floridians. This is what real leadership looks like. Leadership is not sending someone down there to beg people not to come,” Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody said at the press conference, referring to Vice President Kamala Harris’s previous statements telling migrants not to travel to the border. (Read more from “Florida Governor To Send Officers to Southern Border” HERE)

[Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/45569056165.]

Delete Facebook, Delete Twitter, Follow Restoring Liberty and Joe Miller at gab HERE.

WATCH: Black Mom Crushes Critical Race Theory at School Board Meeting

/1 Comment/in , /by

A Black mother slammed critical race theory (CRT) on Thursday, telling the Florida Board of Education that it was teaching hate and ruining the “greatest country in the world.”

“Just coming off of May 31, marking the 100 years [since] the Tulsa riots, it is sad that we are even contemplating something like critical race theory, where children will be separated by their skin color and deemed permanently oppressors or oppressed in 2021,” said mom Quisha King.

King’s comments came after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis asked the school board to pass a rule banning CRT and associated ideas in schools.

“That is not teaching the truth,” King added, “unless you believe that Whites are better than Blacks.”

She went on to dispute the idea that CRT was “racial sensitivity or simply teaching unfavorable American history or teaching Jim Crow history.” (Read more from “WATCH: Black Mom Crushes Critical Race Theory at School Board Meeting” HERE)

Delete Facebook, Delete Twitter, Follow Restoring Liberty and Joe Miller at gab HERE.

FBI Subpoenas Media Outlet Demanding Records That Would Identify Readers of Florida Shooting Story

/0 Comments/in , /by

USA TODAY is fighting a subpoena from the FBI demanding records that would identify readers of a February story about a southern Florida shooting that killed two agents and wounded three others.

In a motion filed in federal district court in Washington, D.C., asking a judge to quash the subpoena, Gannett, USA TODAY’s parent company, said the effort is not only unconstitutional but also violates the Justice Department’s own rules.

“The FBI has failed to demonstrate compliance with the United States Attorney General’s regulations for subpoenas to the press – regulations that President Biden himself recently pledged the Administration would follow,” Gannett’s lawyers wrote in the motion filed May 28, a day before the deadline the FBI set for the media company to produce the records.

The subpoena, issued in April, demands the production of records containing IP addresses and other identifying information “for computers and other electronic devices” that accessed the story during a 35-minute time frame starting at 8:03 p.m. on the day of the shooting.

“Being forced to tell the government who reads what on our websites is a clear violation of the First Amendment,” Maribel Perez Wadsworth, USA TODAY’s publisher, said in a statement. “The FBI’s subpoena asks for private information about readers of our journalism.” (Read more from “FBI Subpoenas Media Outlet Demanding Records That Would Identify Readers of Florida Shooting Story” HERE)

Delete Facebook, Delete Twitter, Follow Restoring Liberty and Joe Miller at gab HERE.