SURFSIDE, FLA. (WSVN) – South Florida is marking the fifth anniversary of the catastrophic condominium collapse in Surfside by honoring the victims’ memories.

7News cameras captured loved ones, survivors and local leaders at a solemn remembrance held at 98 Points of Light Way, Wednesday morning.

“There are are moments that divide life into before and after,” said a rabbi as he addressed attendees.

June 24, 2021 became a line of demarcation for the first responders who worked tirelessly to find people in the rubble of Champlain Towers South, or the families of the 98 people who were painfully taken too soon, and for the entire community who continue to carry on their legacy.

Larissa Gromova’s 24-year-old daughter Anastasia was killed that night, along with her friend Michelle Pazos.

“They were so young,” said Gromova as she broke down in tears.

Every year, Gromova comes back for the anniversary ceremony to reflect and honor her daughter’s memory.

“You know, for me it’s not five years, it’s just a whole piece of time, but some part of us is still there. It’s not five years for us,” said Gromova.

The morning’s ceremony, which got underway at around 10 a.m., was preceded by an overnight lighting of the torch, also at 98 Points of Light Way, to mark the moment when the condominium crumbled where it had stood for 40 years, at 1:15 a.m. on June 24, 2021.

“Today’s lighting of the torch, let it be a symbol of remembrance, of resiliency and hope,” said Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Chief Ray Jadallah.

The collapse in Surfside has left a deep wound that’s hard to put into words. Slabs of concrete from the building were preserved and placed across the street as a reminder.

Among the survivors who attended the overnight remembrance was Devin Gonzalez, who fell out of Apartment 904. Her father, Edgar Gonzalez, did not make it out.

“The best thing, honestly, that we can do is just to look at the mistakes from the past and make sure that we don’t make that again,” said Devin.

These ceremonies come two days after a federal group of investigators released their findings on the likely cause of the collapse. The report blamed a combination of environmental and construction issues.

“We have concluded that the failure most likely began in early June, about three weeks before the collapse, when two connections between garage columns and the pool deck slab failed,” said Judith Mitrani-Reiser, co-lead investigator with the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s National Construction Safety Team.

NIST-NCST’s report blames a combination of design and construction issues, as well as environmental factors.

“We found no evidence of any specific initiating event. The final factor that brought the critically low margins of safety to the point of failure was most likely long-term degradation from corrosion,” said Glenn Bell, another co-lead investigator with NIST-NCST.

Florida Lt. Gov. Jay Collins addressed the matter during the morning ceremony.

“After Surfside, we had to take a hard look at inspections, maintenance, reserves, repairs and transparency,” he said.

Martin Langesfeld, who lost his sister Nicky in the collapse, takes issue with the timing of the NIST-NCST report’s release.

“It took them five years, nearly $40 million, for this federal investigation to be completed, and it came back with absolutely nothing new,” he said. “The community will not forget what happened on the site behind me.”

Langesfeld’s family continues to hold on to memories of the good times with Nicky and her husband Luis Sadovnic.

The irony, Langesfeld said, is the newlyweds lives ended in the very place they saw themselves building a beautiful future together.

“They had plans for a family that they will never see, and they had a future together,” he said. “They moved into what they called their dream home, their dream apartment, to start their life, and exactly that is what took their life from them.”

All 98 victims’ names were read aloud at both ceremonies.

The slabs of concrete preserved near the site of the collapse are going to be used in a permanent memorial that will be built for the victims.

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