Incredible video shows what rescuers were up against while trying to pull a teenager out of the Champlain Towers South building collapse one week ago.
Shining their flashlights in the debris, they found 15-year-old Jonah Handler pinned down, unable to move.
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“There was screams saying, 'Help me, help me, please don’t leave me,'" said David Araujo, who shot the video and first spotted Handler in the debris. "We saw the little hand of what looked to be a kid. And that’s when the paramedics were walking in and we were like, 'Look - there’s a hand right there.'”
Rescuers eventually pulled Handler out safely. They found his mother, Stacie Fang, nearby. She later died at the hospital.
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Araujo wanted to help other survivors who were screaming from their balconies, but he couldn’t reach them.
“It was too much," Araujo said. "It was insane seeing the people losing their families, people screaming above and people screaming in the back.”
Now a week since the tragedy, Araujo says it’s getting harder to process what happened because every day, he learns more about the lives lost.
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“It was real as much as you don’t want to accept it. It happened. And it’s hard to imagine if you had relatives in there," he said.
