Miami doctor collecting photos found in condo collapse

When Dr. Benjamin Abo, an EMS physician, arrived on the site of a Miami-area condo collapse early Thursday morning, he spotted something in the rubble.

"On the first morning that I was here, came out from the garage, and looked down and we see a wedding photo. Obviously from '70s, maybe early '80s, in a synagogue," said Abo, who is the medical director for Miami-Dade Fire Rescue's Urban Search and Rescue Team.

He set it aside, meaning to try to bring it later to a local synagogue.

But as the search through the layers of concrete and metal have continued over the past six days during the search for more than one hundred unaccounted for residents, Abo and others kept finding photos that he knew needed saving.

"And then all of the sudden find some more wedding photos, or a bar mitzvah photo, or some vacation photos," said Abo on Wednesday.

"And it really started building up. And then when we started getting access to other rooms, bedrooms and living rooms and things like that, you really start to piece together who was here."

Abo and his team have been collecting these important photos, as well as some diplomas, passports and IDs, in several boxes near the collapse site.

The plan is to find a way to get those precious memories back into the hands of family members.

"The plan is to find somebody smarter than me to help figure out what resources we have. I don't know if there is archivists or volunteers or something. I don't know."

While they figure out how to organize and identify who is in those photos, Abo said the work on the site will continue 24/7.