They plan to raise a monument on the Miami building collapse site

The accident leaves at least 95 dead, of which 85 have been identified, and 14 people are still missing after a 20-day search, said Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.

“We have all been talking about what could or should happen to this place” at the end of the debris removal operations and the ongoing judicial proceedings, he said at a press conference.

“We have started talking about the fact that we definitely need a monument. We must have some kind of memorial,” he said.

It remains to determine the exact location of that monument and whether it will cover the entire site or just part of it, Levine Cava added.

An online petition on the website Change.org had collected more than 1,200 signatures on Tuesday so that the perimeter of the collapsed building “becomes a monument”, estimating that the accident “left many dead and that each person who died and disappeared should be remembered”.

But some residents want a new building built on the land, said Charles Burkett, the mayor of the small town of 6,000 people north of Miami.

“Some families also want to go back and live there. They want the building to be rebuilt in a portion of the place, they recognize that a part of the place is sacred, but they are not resigned to losing their home”, he explained.

The Champlain Towers South complex, a 12-story waterfront building, partially collapsed early June 24 for reasons still unknown. The first elements of the investigation suggest that the structure of the building seemed worn in some sectors.

The rest of the building was evacuated after the accident and demolished on July 4, because authorities believed that its instability put rescue teams at risk.