NEW ORLEANS — Rescue operations will soon shift to recovery at the site of the Hard Rock Hotel construction collapse.
During a press conference Wednesday afternoon, Fire Chief Tim McConnell said that rescue crews will make multiple sweeps of the collapse site again Wednesday, but that chances of the lone missing worker being found alive are slim.
“There’s always numbers going around, but the odds of survival are zero if we don’t get a hit by tonight,” McConnell said.
If there are no signs of life in the building, rescue workers will shift their focus to recovering the missing worker's body.
“It changes a lot of things,” McConnell said. “It changes the risk our first responders take. You risk a life to save a life, we can’t say the same for recovery.”
Officials were able to retrieve a DNA sample from the deceased worker trapped inside the building. Using that sample, they identified him and the one worker still missing.
They did not release those names during the press conference.
“There’s no easy way to tell somebody that,” McConnell said. “We went in and did it as gently as possible. We’ve prepared them as best as we could for when we finally got the results yesterday.”
Meanwhile, engineers are determining the best way to bring down the two unstable cranes standing above the collapse site. On Wednesday, engineers will be lifted in baskets to investigate the cranes and discern the safest way to bring them down.
“If we can bring them down without damaging the structure anymore (that) is our goal,” McConnell said.
A tropical development in the Gulf of Mexico is adding urgency to the operation. The system now has a 50% chance for development and could become a tropical storm before making landfall. if it does develop, it is still unknown if it would come to New Orleans.
“Models shifts and fluctuate throughout the day,” Homeland Security Director Collin Arnold said. “This has certainly developed a sense of urgency with the engineering team when we talked about it last night, about what to do with the cranes.”
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