'I couldn't stop gasping': Suburban woman sees Surfside devastation up close

A Barrington Hills woman who spends about half the year in Surfside, Florida, was among the first to view the aftermath of a collapsed condo building two blocks from her home.

"I couldn't stop gasping," said Jackie Sara, who splits the year between Surfside and the suburbs, while providing care for a Barrington Hills woman in her 80s. "It reminded me of Oklahoma City, the way the whole building is just open."

Sara did not hear the collapse of the 12-story Champlain Towers South Condo building. She was woken about 6:45 a.m. by a friend calling from Jacksonville who'd heard the news and was unsure about how far it was from where Sara and her client live.

Sara went out quickly to look at the remains of the 40-year-old building she'd grown accustomed to seeing over the past eight years.

"It's all pancaked," she said. "You can't tell there was a building there."

Sara said she hadn't heard any strong theories as to what caused the catastrophe, and was surprised to see a structure designed to withstand hurricanes vulnerable to collapse.

She said she hopes most of the building's residents had gone to other places for the summer, as in past years her client had normally returned to Barrington Hills by Mother's Day.

"A lot of people came up to me and asked me if I knew anybody in the building," she said. "There was so much devastation, people didn't know what to say."

Apart from people safely evacuated in their pajamas from surrounding buildings, the only rescue Sara knew of was of a young man from a nearby parking structure.

Before this year, Surfside - a town of 5,725 people roughly half an hour north of South Beach Miami - was known mainly for its sea turtles. It even has painted ceramic turtles decorating it like the artwork cows that populated Chicago in 1999.

But the town's quiet anonymity changed earlier this year when Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner moved in after the end of the Trump administration.

Though her client was unable to view the destruction firsthand, she was shocked by the photos Sara showed her after having been living part-time in Surfside for more than 50 years.

"This is a tiny, little quiet town," Sara said.