Before and after look: <\/strong>Champlain Towers South, the Florida building that partially collapsed<\/span><\/p>\n The awful wait for news of the missing weighed even on those without a connection to them.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI personally did not know anybody in the building, but I certainly am good friends with a lot of people that did,\u201d Rev. Robert Asinger said. \u201cSo it becomes not just a building collapse. It becomes about Bill or Fred or whoever it is. And it makes it very personal.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Struck with an urge to help, reverends told almost 40 worshippers that the church had opened a disaster relief fund with $20,000.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhen Parkland happened and when Pulse happened, we prayed but there was a distance,\u201d Rev. Barbara Asinger said. \u201cI think that’s how we survive as human beings. We create distance because we hear so much these days. When you can’t do that anymore, you weep. You weep and then you try to determine how to help.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n Sergio Lozano had dinner with his parents, Gladys and Antonio Lozano, when they said their goodbyes and retreated to their respective condominiums in different towers of the same complex, the Champlain Towers condo complex in Surfside.\u00a0<\/p>\n Startled by a loud boom, Sergio Lozano stepped out into his balcony and was hit by a staggering sight: billowing smoke and night sky where his parent\u2019s condo building once stood.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n USA TODAY's Romina Ruiz-Goiriena shares her experience on the ground covering the condo collapse in Surfside, Florida.<\/p>\n USA TODAY<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cMy wife was walking behind me because she was going to help me bring in the patio furniture,\u201d he told WPLG-TV in Miami. \u201cAnd I tell her, \u2018Lola, the building\u2019s not there.\u2019\u00a0 She\u2019s yelling and saying, \u2018What do you mean?\u2019 I go, \u2018My parents\u2019 apartment is not there. It\u2019s gone!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Family members of residents of the collapsed 12-story building staggered in and out of a family reunification center on Sunday trying to make sense of the tragedy.\u00a0The family members left DNA samples to identify relatives\u2019 remains and gleaned scraps of information on rescue efforts.\u00a0<\/p>\n Others clung to hope that rescue teams could still pull survivors from the wreckage. Ashley Dean, traveled from\u00a0Louisiana\u00a0to Surfside over the weekend to see if her younger sister, Cassie Stratton, had survived the collapse.\u00a0<\/p>\n Stratton was on the phone with her husband, Michael, when the building shook then collapsed, Dean told media outlets. She let out a scream as she plunged toward the earth. Stratton remains unaccounted for.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been extremely agonizing. It\u2019s been painful. It\u2019s very confusing,\u201d Dean told New Orleans\u2019 WVUE-TV. \u201cIt\u2019s almost unbelievable.\u201d<\/p>\n For years, Antonio and Gladys Lozano would bicker over who would go first.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the end, they departed at the same time. The elderly couple, who would have celebrated their 59th anniversary next month, died together in the tower collapse.\u00a0<\/p>\n Miami-Dade Police recovered their bodies one day apart from each other in the rubble of the South condominium tower, the agency said. <\/p>\n Toward the back of the church office chapel in\u00a0Bay Harbor Islands, unlit candles dotted a wooden table. Before Becky Bosch left the room, a gentle flame had been set to most of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt impacts you, even if you don\u2019t know the people who live there,\u201d said Bosch, 52, of Surfside. “I’ve been in that building. I dropped my son off when he was little to go see friends there. I lived right across the street from there on 90th. It\u2019s a very peaceful corner. It’s beautiful.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n As efforts to pull survivors from the rubble continue, her son\u00a0found strength in prayer.\u00a0<\/p>\n “I know the whole community would want to be there,” said\u00a0Aaron Bosch, 22. “I know everybody would want to be there picking up rubble, but it’s not that easy. I think the best thing we can do right now is pray.”\u00a0<\/p>\n Sergio\u00a0Lozano\u00a0said his parents would have celebrated their 59th anniversary on July 21 and had known each other for more than 60 years. The son said that his parents had joked that neither wanted the other one to pass away first because they didn\u2019t want to be without each other.<\/p>\n Sergio said if he was to find solace, it is that if they did not survive the collapse, that they \u201cwent together and went quickly,\u201d according to WPLG-TV.\u00a0<\/p>\nFor small, close-knit community, the tragedy was hard to bear<\/h2>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/uxstatic\/usatoday\/usat-web-static-5018.1.0\/images\/sprites\/icon_close.png\"){kind=icon}
<\/p>\nFinding strength through prayer<\/h2>\n