AP: Officials in Iowa are making plans to demolish a six-story apartment building a day after it partially collapsed, injuring at least one person and displacing countless residents and business owners. No fatalities have been reported.
City officials in Davenport, a city in eastern Iowa, said in a news release that the property owner was served Monday with an order for demolition of the building that was once the Davenport Hotel. Residents were not being allowed back inside to remove their belongings due to the building’s unstable condition.
“The property is currently being secured by a contractor on site this afternoon and demolition is expected to commence in the morning,” the statement said.
The cause of the collapse was not immediately known.
News of the collapse didn’t surprise Schlaan Murray, a former resident, who told The Associated Press that his one-year stay there was “a nightmare.”
Murray, 46, moved into his apartment in February 2022 and almost immediately began having issues. The heat and air conditioner didn’t work, and there were plumbing problems in the bathroom.
He made multiple calls to the management company, and rarely got a response. Occasionally, he said, a maintenance person would stop by but never completely fix the problem.
“They would come in and put some caulk on it,” he said. “But it needed more than that. They didn’t fix stuff, they just patched it up.”
He questions how the building passed inspections. more
But $$$ Billions for Ukraine. Trillions for debt.
“He questions how the building passed inspections.”
Democrats helping democrats.
Sorry, RICH Democrats helping RICH Democrats.
They already know they own the votes of the peasants who actually have to LIVE there, so THEY get NOTHING.
A quick GooGoo search yesterday revealed that said broken building was built in 1910. It lived a good life, then fell down like my dad.
People aren’t allowed to get their belongings? You should have the right at your own risk. They might have their life savings in gold, or irreplaceable heirlooms you bet the demolition man will get.
This is more tyranny under the guise of safety, not freedom.
Just keep procrastinating and it’s take care of itself…
…My heart goes out to those people who did what they were supposed to do and left the building with only the clothes on their back, only to find out that’s all they would ever have and they would have to watch their belongings be destroyed with the building because its too dangerous to get them. While those things may not be valuable from the point of view of whatever corporate asshole or politically connected slumlord mismanaged the building, those things are valuable to someone and some things, like family pictures, are literally irreplacable. It will be like watching a tornado wreck your life from a shelter for them, as their terrible building is tumbled down on top of what they spent a lifetime amassing, and there’s nothing they can do about it.
It’s hard for me to suggest an alternative. Unstable buildings are unstable, and no policeman, fireman, building engineer, or construction worker has any special dispensation from God that will protect them from a sudden shift in the fragile floor load from wind, rain, or simply gravity. Shoring could be done but that costs money and takes time, neither of which a partly collapsed building are likely to have. Even if doughty voulenteers could be found, they would have to be rescued if something went wrong, with additional life hazard incurred. Its a terrible thing but you can’t put property over lives, no matter how dear that property may be.
But I would DEFINITELY take that out on the neglectful building owner’s ass.
…just as an example of how callous building owners can be, and have been for awhile, a couple of decades ago I was doing a preplan with my agency at a then-new apartment complex that was to include a legally required substantial Section 8 component. The complex was not up and running at the time and we were walking through with the Chief and whatever poobah the complex manager sent, followed by a sitdown to exchange expectations for him to transmit to his company. The guy pointed out the fairly basic construction of his multi-unit dwelling and how simply and quickly it had been thrown up, and could be again, which was a weird way to talk to the fire deparment. We then found out WHY when he told the Chief that he would be happier if, in the case of any unit catching fire, we were to simply let the entire MUD building burn down while protecting the others, because it would be simpler for them to scrape the remains off the slab with a bulldozer and build new.
Taken aback by this, the Chief nevertheless came up with a response. I don’t recall his exact words, but without cursing, raising his voice, or repeating himself at any point he spent the next 15 minutes or so explaining to the guy that we had a duty and an obligation to behave otherwise, that we held his unfortunate tenants in at LEAST as high of esteem as we were required to hold him, that THEIR lives and property were every bit as valuable as HIS life and property, and that we weren’t going to needlessly risk lives, other people’s property, and a possible complex conflaguration simply because a group of investors found it more convenient from their point of view to do so. He walked up one side and down the other of the guy, hushed him every time he tried to burst out red-faced and pop-eyed to protest, and pointed out that HE had charge of permitting and inspections and that THIS complex would be VERY closely inspected as a result of this conversation, to ensure the utmost was being done to preserve the lives and property entrusted to them. After finding about a dozen ways to tell the guy to go screw himself and his bosses without ever actually putting it that way, he dismissed the guy and said the inspectors would be over to see him first thing in the morning.
…We DID have many fires there, particuarly in the two buildings desginated at the time for Section 8. Some were electrical from wire theives, some were from more prosaic causes like smoking and food on the stove, and some were from flaming mattresses in stairwells lit off by bored teens. But for all that we always put a stop and never let it burn down, and I hope it cost them a FORTUNE each time to rehouse and repair for what that asshole said on that day before the place even opened.
Tenants can and do suck. Absolutely, no denying that, I just said some of the ways they do above. I would NEVER be a landlord even though I have had the opportunity, because of some of the things I’ve seen tenants do and how difficult it can be to remove them. That said, if you’re going to hold out a property for rent the obligation falls on YOU to maintain it and keep it safe for everyone concerned, in their persons and effects. If you are unwilling or unable to do that, you should exit the property business by the speediest way possible by either closing down your building or selling it off. Leaving people to fate with indifferent and potentially deadly maintenance practices should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of what little law remains. Simply allowing the building to fall down or burning it down like that guy the other day did is NOT an option. All this information about how people behave in buildings they are not paying for has been out there a long time, as has information on how difficult some municipalities can make it to be rid of them. Don’t play the game if you don’t have the stomach for all that, is all I can say about it.
But risking men, women, children, and random passersby is not an option, and that has to be explained as forcefully as possible in this particular situation.
Iowa, a republican trifecta & triplex. Their just doing what they know best, let it all fall apart. Then, they commence to point fingers.
Reminiscent of that Florida apartment building partial collapse. The difficulty is a technical one, beyond politics as implied above, in at what point do you declare an emergency? While I suspect there are periodic fire marshal walks on these apartments, there are almost certainly no structural inspector walks of buldings; though I suspect the fire marshal does have an eye out. That said, you can only see what you can see, and its whata inside the walls that keeps the building standing.
While repair staff will come in to caulk and repaint a crack, it takes a deeper understanding to realize that this is not mere settling of the building.
I think we can polish that turd and make it usable…
FJB