Gerald Herbert/AP
- Tropical Storm Elsa is expected to hit South Florida next week.
- The storm made officials push up the timeline for demolishing the remaining units in the collapsed Surfside condo.
- More than 120 people are still missing after the collapse but rescue efforts have been paused.
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
Tropical Storm Elsa has forced officials in Florida to put a pause on search and rescue efforts at the site of the partially collapsed Champlain Towers South building and accelerate the timeline for demolition of remaining units, The Washington Post reported.
On Friday, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava authorized the demolition of the remaining units but said it would most likely take weeks.
Cava said officials would find a balance between searching for more victims in the rubble and demolition the remaining structure.
However, on Saturday, Cava said the search and rescue operation was suspended this afternoon in preparation for the demolition.
Miami-Dade Assistant Fire Chief Raide Jadallah said the suspension of the search and rescue was a necessary safety measure since the remaining structure could collapse, the Associated Press reported.
He said the building won't come down before Monday.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the building was unsound and had to be demolished as Elsa, which is growing in the Caribbean, is expected to hit the state in the next few days.
"If the building is taken down, this will protect our search and rescue teams, because we don't know when it could fall over," DeSantis said at a news conference, the AP reported. "And, of course, with these gusts, potentially that would create a really severe hazard."
Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said he was worried the storm could take the building down in the wrong direction creating a bigger problem, the Post reported.
As of Saturday, 24 bodies have been recovered and more than 120 people are still unaccounted for. No one has been rescued alive since the day of the collapse last Thursday.
Survival experts previously told Insider while there could still be a chance some people are saved, the more time goes on the less likely the chance.
"Essentially a giant building fell on those people and on the good/bad scale of survivability, that's very bad," Tim Smith of the Jack Mountain Bushcraft School told Insider.