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A new video this morning, we now hear the moment Champlain Tower South began to collapse.
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7's Karen Hensel shows us, we're also hearing from a woman who was there and called loved ones as the building came down around her.
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It was 1.22 a.m. Ring video from a hallway inside Champlain Tower South captured the thunderous roar as the building began to collapse.
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That's what woke me up and threw me out of bed.
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Reza Rodriguez was asleep in Unit 907.
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And that's when I said to myself, what the hell's going on?
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We don't have earthquakes in Miami.
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She ran to her balcony door.
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Once I opened the sliders, this white cloud just went.
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She tried calling her longtime friends, Elaine Sabino and Dick Augustine, who lived in Unit 1210.
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No one answered.
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A call to her brother went to voicemail.
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The recording captured 15 minutes of horror.
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Now one year later, wearing the same clothes as that night, Reza sat down with us to explain her terrifying escape.
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So once I opened the door to the stairwell, my brain couldn't compete with what I was seeing.
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It's like, what's going on?
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Where's the building?
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The building is gone.
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I heard from the pile.
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Some ladies scream up to me, please help me.
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Please don't leave me like this.
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It was pitch dark.
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I just couldn't see her at all.
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I kept hearing people crying and moaning.
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Reza kept banging on doors, first helping her neighbor Yadi and Yadi's 8-year-old son.
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Ada's waiting for us on the eighth floor.
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I said, whoever we need to help, we help right on the way out.
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They together rescued 88-year-old Ada and made it down seven flights to the garage.
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I heard water running.
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So I'm thinking water, electricity, we're not going to make it through there.
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Firefighters rescued all of them from a second floor balcony.
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A lot of people don't understand what we went through that night.
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This is now sacred ground where 98 people died.
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Once dubbed the mayor of Champlain Tower South, Reza Rodriguez holds on to the memories here of her neighbors and friends.
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It just breaks my heart that all these people are just gone.
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Even though Reza lost her unit, she still has to pay the monthly mortgage, forcing the 60-year-old to move back in with her parents.
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Returning to the collapse site is hard.
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I get physically sick.
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I could just see certain people just sitting where everybody would sit.
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And then I looked and I just, everything's gone.
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Her friends she tried to call that night did not survive.
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Richard Augustine and Elaine, they were my friends for 18 years.
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You know, sometimes I look up at the sky and I talk to Dick and I talk to Elaine, and I'm sorry.
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I'm sorry I couldn't help.
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Reza Rodriguez called Champlain Tower South home for 18 years.
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She tells Karen she thinks about that night and her friends every day since the collapse.
