FOG BLOG U.S. NEWS LOG: BODY COUNT AT CONDO COLLAPSE SITE RISES TO 36 AS SURFSIDE PREPARES FOR ELSA!

Searchers at collapse site ‘not seeing anything positive'.....SURFSIDE, Fla. (AP) — Officials overseeing the search at the site of the Florida condominium collapse sounded increasingly somber Tuesday about the prospects for finding anyone alive, saying they have detected no new signs of life in the rubble as the death toll climbed to 36.

Crews in yellow helmets and blue jumpsuits searched the debris for a 13th day while wind and rain from the outer bands of Tropical Storm Elsa complicated their efforts. Video released by the Miami-Dade County Fire Rescue Department showed workers lugging pickaxes and power saws through piles of concrete rubble barbed with snapped steel rebar. Other searchers could be seen digging with gloved hands through pulverized concrete and dumping shovels of debris into large buckets.

Search-and-rescue workers continued to look for open spaces where people might be found alive nearly two weeks after the disaster struck at the Champlain Towers South building in Surfside........MORE ON THE BUILDING COLLAPSE

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“We’re actively searching as aggressively as we can,” Miami-Dade County Fire Chief Alan Cominsky said at a news conference. But he added: “Unfortunately, we are not seeing anything positive. The key things — void spaces, living spaces — we’re not seeing anything like that.”

While officials still call the efforts a search-and-rescue operation, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said families of those still missing are preparing for news of “tragic loss. ”Tropical Storm Elsa weakens and slows, but a tropical storm watch is in effect for South Florida.....The hurricane center said Elsa was moving west-northwest at 14 mph with maximum sustained winds of 60 mph. Elsa's tropical storm force winds extend outward up to 115 miles from its center.

Late Saturday, the storm battered parts of the Dominican Republic and Haiti with heavy rain and high winds as its center passed to the south.

Two people died in the Dominican Republic as Elsa lashed the Caribbean island on Saturday, the country's Emergency Operations Center (COE) said.

In separate incidents, heavy winds caused walls to collapse in Bahoruco, killing a 15-year-old, and in Bani, killing a 75-year-old, COE reported.

Elsa is moving very near Jamaica and parts of eastern and central Cuba on Sunday, the hurricane center said, where tropical storm conditions were expected and hurricane conditions were possible later Sunday and at night.