4-year-old consoles mom and offers to find grandma missing in Florida condo collapse

Judy Spiegel, a 66-year-old mom and grandma, is still missing a week after a 12-story Florida condo that partially collapsed in Surfside. Spiegel's family hasn't received any update on her and they're scared and anxious as the days pass by. "My body can't stop shaking. I have no appetite. I can't sleep," Rachel, Speigel's daughter, wrote on Instagram, reported TODAY. "All I want to do is hold my mom's hand and tell her I love her. Rachel has had a tough time trying to explain to her daughter Scarlett about what's happened to her grandmom. "Scarlett told us that she is really good at playing hide and seek and is probably hiding in a really good spot," Rachel wrote of her 4-year-old daughter. Rachel said she was trying not to scare her daughter as well.

Scarlett has volunteered to go find her grandmother. "She told me 'I can go get her, I want to go get her, because I know where she hides, I'm really good at finding her,'" Rachel told CNN. "And so when she's telling me that, I'm crying even more, but trying to keep my composure because I don't want my 4-year-old to worry too much. I told her that she is and that we have asked a ton of people to help us look for her. We told her that I have been on the news asking for help."

Rachel's last conversation with her mother was about a special dress that Rachel wanted to buy for Scarlett. It was sold out at Target but her mother Judy managed to find the right size on the Target app and bought it for her granddaughter. "She went back to the target app and they had it! Size 4! She, of course, bought it for our wonderful Scarlett!!! Best grandma in the world," wrote Rachel. A few days after the building collapsed, Scarlett received the dress her grandmother had bought for her. "Last night the dress arrived. We went to the front door and got the white bag with the big red bullseye…we just knew," wrote Rachel. She is one among many hoping their family members are rescued from the rubble of the condo collapse. Rachel has been posting about her mother and said she loved Disney, and chocolate ice cream.

Rachel posted an emotional message on Instagram. "It's been 48 hours and the reality and depth of this situation is starting to hit us. All of our belongings are gone. My parent's wedding album, a lifetime's worth of pictures, her beautiful dresses. Mommy, please know how much I love you. You are the ultimate mom, ultimate grandma, ultimate friend. Everyone that knows any of us knows that my mom is the pillar of our family. She did all the work to keep us together. I will never give up hope and will never stop fighting," she wrote. 

The death toll from the collapse has risen to 18, including two children, said the authorities. Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava confined that four bodies had been found in the rubble on Wednesday. Authorities said 145 people were still missing, reported TODAY. Rescue operations are continuing on the location. During the early stage of the rescue response, Miami-Dade County Fire Chief Alan Cominsky said rescue teams could hear a woman's voice from the rubble but couldn't find her. The voice can't be heard anymore but the search continues. "Eventually, we didn't hear her voice anymore, we continued to search,” said Cominsky during a news conference. “Again… that's emphasizing the magnitude of what we're going through.”

President Biden met and spoke to families of those who had either died or were missing in the Flordia condo collapse. Biden spoke to them for three hours and consoled them. “The waiting, the waiting, is unbearable,” he told the families. Biden later spoke to the press and said the families are going through hell. “I sat with one woman who had just lost her husband and her little baby boy, didn’t know what to do,” said Biden, reported New York Times. “I sat with another family that lost almost the entire family, cousins, brothers, sisters. And to watch them, and they’re praying and pleading and God let there be a miracle.” He added that the least they can do is return the bodies of their loved ones. “They know that the chances are, as each day goes by, diminished slightly,” Biden told reporters. “But at a minimum, at a minimum, they want to recover the bodies. They want to recover the bodies.”