Collapse: Disaster in Surfside · Treefort Media & Miami Herald

Neighbor vs. Neighbor

April 20, 2022·46 min·4 clips

Eileen Rosenberg told the court she lost her 26-year-old daughter Malky in the collapse, and that no amount of money from the settlement should be guaranteed to property owners before death claims are settled.

Nine months have passed. In a packed downtown Miami courtroom, Circuit Judge Michael Hansman tries to speak plainly about pain without shrinking the harm. The language turns legal fast. Hansman talks about compromise as giving up hopes and best case positions, then tells the room that everybody in the case is a victim. The categories are useful for court, but they do not fit the damage. A member of the economic loss class asks the court to look beyond property. Escape left emotional and physical marks too. Sleep is still broken. The survivor describes waking up screaming, pulled back into panic, flight, and the shock of losing a whole life stored in belongings. The building disappeared quickly. After the rest of Champlain Tower South was demolished within ten days, there was no chance to go back for anything. The grief gets painfully ordinary. Linda Robertson points to the Lopez family as one example: insomnia, nightmares, flashbacks, and daily functioning broken since June 24th. Then the story widens. Robertson, who grew up in Miami and has written for The Herald since 1983, describes the tower as a small town within a small town. It was an institution. Built forty years earlier, it held older immigrants, especially Cuban immigrants, Latin Americans from different countries, parents, children, and generations of Miami life. Some residents left with only their clothes. Some had no shoes. Some opened a front door and saw a black void where home had been. A settlement cannot put that back. What remains is a courtroom record where neighbors are sorted into legal classes, while their testimony keeps returning to the simpler truth: they lost shelter, memory, safety, and the community that held them.

As heard by us

A courtroom chapter that keeps Surfside's human cost in view.

Neighbor vs. Neighbor follows the Surfside collapse into the courtroom, and the settlement hearing turns into a plain account of loss. The episode is at its best when survivors and Judge Michael Hansman speak directly about what disappeared: sleep, property, and any real chance…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

For when you want the settlement hearing, nine months after the Champlain Tower South collapse, to feel immediate, human, and specific.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Collapse: Disaster in Surfside