CNN
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If one among many small moments of Iliana Monteagudo’s final evening in her Surfside, Florida, condo had gone in a different way, she mentioned she believes she wouldn’t be alive immediately.
Her bank cards had been already in her purse, she checked her balcony door, she couldn’t discover the staircase at first: all particulars she and her son credit score with saving her life.
Monteagudo is likely one of the survivors of a partial constructing collapse final week. Rescue groups are nonetheless looking by way of the particles, having recovered 18 people who were killed, in hopes of discovering solutions for the households of the 145 individuals nonetheless unaccounted for. And investigators are on the scene to attempt to uncover what initiated the horror.
Monteagudo told CNN’s Chris Cuomo that the night earlier than the collapse, she put her capsules and her bank cards in her purse and lit the candle for the Lady Guadalupe, a catholic icon symbolizing safety in opposition to dangerous issues.
She went to mattress, however round 1:00 a.m. she was woken by what she referred to as a “rare force.”
Believing the sensation got here from an open balcony door, she went to her front room to attempt to shut it. But then behind her she saw a crack coming from the ceiling, shortly snaking down the wall and opening quick.
“Something inside of me said run,” Monteagudo mentioned. “You have to run to save your life.”
In moments, she placed on the primary garments she may discover, grabbed her telephone and her purse, blew out the candle and ran out of her house, she mentioned.
Once in the hallway, she discovered quiet: no panic, no alarms and nobody else operating.
She knew not to take the elevator however didn’t know that the emergency stairs had been simply beside her unit, so she went to the farthest set of stairs as a substitute.
“If I knew that, maybe I would have taken that one,” Monteagudo mentioned.
But as she was flying down the six flooring of stairs, pleading with God to let her see her sons and grandsons once more, she heard the sound of the tower she lived in collapsing. If she had been in the steps closest to her residence, she seemingly would have been crushed, her son mentioned.
“She had to wake up early the next day, the next morning,” her son Andres Alvarez mentioned. “She didn’t take her sleeping pill because she was afraid she was going to oversleep. If it wasn’t for that open door… if it wasn’t for that wind… if she hadn’t seen that crack… she wouldn’t be here telling the story.”
Now, she is protected, Monteagudo mentioned, however she cries for her neighbors, misplaced in the constructing she moved into six months in the past. Her transfer got here after 40 years residing in Miami, telling her buddies sooner or later she could be residing in Champlain Towers South.