Published by
Miami Herald
Miami Herald
SURFSIDE, Fla. — Raysa Rodriguez, a retired postal worker, lived in Unit 907 of Champlain Towers South for 17 years. She was a few payments away from paying off her mortgage. But the dream retirement ended in the middle of the night, when a giant rumble shook her from her sleep. The building, Rodriguez wrote in a dramatic first-person account included in a newly filed lawsuit, “swayed like a piece of paper.” She switched on the bedroom lamp — but there was no power. She ran to the balcony “and a wall of dust hit me.” Firefighters leave food, water for cat left behind on fourth floor of collaps…