week next week. garrett haake live on on capitol hill, thank you. a couple of minutes exclusive new nbc news reporting on just where talks over police reform stand. if you were looking for some progress on that front, you are not going to be happy with the news that we have from our sources. we ll talk about that in a minute. we have breaking news from the white house. we ve been talking about what s happened? surfside, florida. president biden is confirming he will go to florida as early as thursday. he s making the remarks in the last three minutes or so as we ve been on the air on the south lawn of the white house. mike memoli joins us live. there had been a discussion from the day after the building collapse happened whether president biden in his role as concealer-in-chief would go doyne to the scene in florida to talk with folks there? reporter: that s right, hallie.
i mean, look at that video. what caused a building like that to collapse, so suddenly and so catastrophically? officials are promising an urgent investigation. but experts say, at this stage, it s just impossible to try and pinpoint a precise cause. it s very unusual to see a building collapse like in this way. it reminds me of building in in countries where they have earthquakes and they the constructions is not in a good conditions. kit is president of miamoto, a structural and disaster risk management firm. he joins me now, live, from los angeles. thanks so much for being here. so much to get to, and i will get to the issue of what possibly could have caused this. but for now, i was interested in the fact that the mayor of miami-dade, you know, came out and said, look.
but the building s systems actually pretty simple. it s essentially a series of concrete plate. it s a floor. sits on top of the, what we call, columns. essentially, pillars. they are spaced, usually, about 10 meter, each way, about-30 feet. and so, if one or so of the pillars fells, everything collapse on top of each other. that s exactly what happen there. and that, most likely, the column fail in some way in the center of the structure because that s where the failure was initiated. as you can see it, at the lower-level columns, which is collapse first, that s how actually work like that. now, question is why that column failed, right? no one really knew that, quite yet. but technically speaking, you can kind of imagine there is a couple things could happen to it. one very good potential is the corrosion. each of the columns made of
we re gonna learn. over the next 10 years, comcast is committing $1 billion to reach 50 million low-income americans with the tools and resources they need to be ready for anything. i hope you re ready. cause we are. we return to florida now, of course, where four people have been confirmed dead and 159 remain unaccounted for following thursday s devastating building collapse in the town of surfside. families are desperately waiting for news of their loved ones. we are about to show you the moment of the collapse. but be aware, some viewers may find the video jarring to watch. one of the big questions that remains.
to explain it to us. appreciate it. thank you, paula. now, this tragedy is reaching well beyond the borders of the united states. dozens of latin-american nationals are among those unaccounted for in the collapse. you see the nationalities there, and that s including members of paraguay s members of paraguay s first-lady s family. for more on that, we want to turn to journalist, stefano pozzebon. he is in colombia now for us, at this hour. you know, stefano, it s been interesting and heartbreaking, quite frankly, to see these families arrive onsite. but, of course, they want to be there. they feel better, being there. and i m sure there are dozens of family right now, wondering what s going on and lacking the information because they are not in the united states. precisely. let s remember that this is going on. this tragedy is taking place in the midst of another tragedy, which is covid-19. which has impacted dramatically impacted south america and is making travel,