Marion County’s Gentle Carousel Miniature Horses made a trip to the Surfside Memorial recently to help a community still mourning a condo collapse that claimed the lives of nearly 100 people.
Sweetheart and Magic, two miniature horses that help the organization carry out therapy services, traveled earlier this month to the site of the Champlain Towers South condominium collapse in Surfside, Florida.
The horses comforted families and first responders and visited the memorial of the catastrophe, which took place on June 24. The group left behind a stuffed horse at the memorial.
In the weeks following the building’s collapse, multiple emergency personnel were dispatched from all over the state of Florida to aid in search and rescue efforts for the ninety-seven lives that were lost in the building collapse.
Task Force 8, which returned to Marion County on July 4, was comprised of technical rescue specialists from Marion County Fire Rescue, Gainesville Fire Rescue and Ocala Fire Rescue. The group
“Not only was your community watching, the state of Florida was watching, United States was watching, and the world was watching, each and every one of you work,” said Marion County Fire Chief James Banta in comments to the force during their return.
To learn more about the ongoing efforts to help families of those lost, visit the Support Surfside website.