She lost her father to Covid-19 and didn’t get to say goodbye. Now her mother is unaccounted for in the Surfside building collapse

By Christina Maxouris, CNN

Magaly “Maggie” Ramsey said she didn’t get to hold her father or say her final goodbyes before he died from Covid-19 in August.

Now, she fears she may have also lost the chance to say goodbye to her mother, who is one of the dozens missing in the wake of the deadly South Florida condominium collapse.

“We’re all praying, primarily for the same things,” Ramsey told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday. “My faith is that, whether she’s here or she’s not, she’s in God’s grace and so that keeps me going.”

At least 12 people are dead following the building’s partial collapse last week. More than 140 people are still unaccounted for, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said Tuesday. Conditions for search and rescue crews have been challenging, but local officials say they haven’t given up hope to find survivors in the pile of rubble.

Ramsey said her hopes are slowly shifting from finding her mother alive to at least rescuers being able to find her body.

The White House announced President Joe Biden will travel to Surfside on Thursday to visit with victims’ families and first responders.

Ramsey told CNN she’d like to meet with the president to tell him how she feels and to “stop this from ever happening again.”

“I feel like some very poor decisions were made and it robbed me of saying goodbye to my mother,” Ramsey said. “I want a sense of accountability for that, that I’m hoping that the government does intercede to provide that.”

Ramsey said her mother was a “strong, Cuban woman” who came to the US roughly six decades ago in search for freedom and freedom of speech.

She was “living comfortably in her apartment by the ocean, traveling, and as of late, really enjoying her family,” Ramsey said.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.