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US News

Florida condo resident describes survivor’s guilt after earlier trip

By
Jackie Salo
Published June 29, 2021
Updated June 29, 2021, 3:02 p.m. ET

A resident of the doomed Florida condo says he feels pangs of survivor’s guilt after he bought an earlier train ticket that took him out of town on the night of the deadly collapse — a decision that likely saved his life but has left him with a “pit in my stomach.”

“Why did it happen that I wasn’t there in my apartment?” Champlain Towers South resident Jason Miller, 75, told the Washington Post.

“That was the place I usually would have been. I wasn’t there, and I made a decision to go away.”

Miller, who lived in a third-floor condo, said he had randomly decided to leave earlier this month instead of driving up at the end of June like he usually does to go to Philadelphia, where he spends parts of his summers, the newspaper reported.

As the date of his departure approached, he second-guessed whether he should stay longer but ultimately decided that changing his plans wasn’t worth the headache, the Washington Post reported.

He had already decamped to Philadelphia when he learned of the news on the building collapse on his phone Thursday morning.

People add flowers to a memorial featuring photos of some of those lost in the partially collapsed 12-story Champlain Towers South building.
Jason Miller said seeing the news coverage and thinking about his missing neighbors gives him a “pit in my stomach.” AFP via Getty Images

“The first story is about a building collapse in Miami,” he said. “I look further and see that it’s in Surfside and I say: ‘Oh wow. I live in Surfside.’ I look further and see 88th Street and think: ‘That’s close to my apartment. I wonder what building that could be.’ And I see 8777 and I’m like, ‘That’s my building.’ ”

With every new article and TV broadcast that came out about the collapse, Miller said, he would get a “pit in my stomach.”

“It’s just this gnawing in my stomach and that very rarely happens to me,” he said.

Search and Rescue teams look for possible survivors in the partially collapsed 12-story Champlain Towers South condo building.
Jason Miller left earlier this month instead of driving up at the end of June as he usually does to go to Philadelphia, which spared his life. AFP via Getty Images
Jason Miller had already decamped to Philadelphia when he learned of the news on the building collapse.
Jason Miller had already decamped to Philadelphia when he learned of the news on the building collapse. Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images

Miller said he struggles to think of his neighbors who are missing in the disaster.

“It’s sort of like, you lose a friend, somebody dies — it’s a normal cycle of life,” Miller said. “But when you’ve got all these people and you see people are dead and you should have been in there with them, and you weren’t — that’s kind of a really shocking thing for you and you think, ‘By all rights, I should have been there.’ ”