Contractor said he warned of Davenport building collapse, told workers 'Get away. You’re going to die'

[Stevicus]

Contractor said he warned of Davenport building collapse, told workers 'Get away. You’re going to die'

About three months before the partial collapse of a downtown Davenport apartment building — and again just two days before — a masonry company owner said he predicted it was

qctimes.com

Five people are unaccounted for.

About three months before the partial collapse of a downtown Davenport apartment building — and again just two days before — a masonry company owner said he predicted it was coming.

City officials say at least five people are unaccounted for after the partial collapse Sunday evening at 324 Main St. Families of two men fear they remain under the rubble of the fallen west side of the six-story building.

No new updates came from the city Wednesday on rescue operations or a potential timeline for demolishing the building, which remains standing after city officials said Monday that "demolition is expected to commence" on Tuesday.

However, the city released hundreds of pages of documents Wednesday close to 6 p.m. detailing structural engineering reports, notices of violations, orders to vacate some apartments and resident complaints over the past three years.

Ryan Shaffer, co-owner of R. A. Masonry, was working nearby at 112 W. 3rd St., the former Antonella’s Pizza, in February. While on the job, he said, he was approached by Andrew Wold, the owner of the building where the collapse occurred.

The building owner approached a contractor to get a quote for work needed on the building. Apparently the owner rejected the quote and tried to get the contractor to do a cheaper job, which the contractor refused because it would not be safe for his workers.

Shaffer said Wold asked him to supply a quote for work on the nearby apartment building. When he did, he said, the bid was rejected because it was too high.
“He wanted to cut the cost by cutting out the shoring and supporting of the building," Shaffer said.
Shoring is done to prop up a building when the structure is deemed unsafe, Shaffer explained. The bid for that work alone came in at about $50,000.

“I said, ‘If we don’t do it this way exactly, I’m not putting my guys in there. Somebody is going to die,’ ” he said.
According to Shaffer, Wold then shopped around for someone who would do the work for an acceptable price. City records reflect this.

On Feb. 22, the city of Davenport issued a permit for, “structural masonry repairs to west elevation as specified in engineer's report.”
According to the permit, the job came at a cost of nearly $40,000. The contractor listed is Bi-State Masonry.

The chief building inspector (who has since resigned) declared the building secure.

City inspection records show a final inspection was done on March 1 by Trishna Pradhan, the chief building official for Davenport. The building passed inspection, and the work was being completed in line with the structural engineer's report.

The exterior finish of the building needed to match the historic fabric of the rest of the building. Pradhan wrote that the contractor was aware and the owner was being informed.

In the next sentence, it was noted Bi-State was off the job as of March 1 because the “owner did not agree to their change order for installing brick outside.”

Pradhan continued, saying repair work was on hold but shoring was in place and, “site is secure. Owner has not submitted new timeline for work to commence.”
Work then appears to have resumed, and it passed three more city inspections on April 12, April 21, and May 1. In the last one, the inspector noted “repair work has been completed per Engineer’s Report.”

A separate permit for brickwork was filed on Wednesday, May 24. City records indicate the job consisted of replacing 100 feet of brick on the exterior of the building, per city code.

The permit says the work came at a cost of $3,000. The contractor on the job is listed as “owner.”
Shaffer said, in his opinion, the work described would account for only one-third of what needed to be done. Saturday, one day before the collapse, he drove by and saw a pile of bricks on the ground.

“(Wold) was calling us and asking for I-beams and stuff to support it. I looked at it and was like, ‘There’s no saving it at this point,’” he said.


Friday, two days before the building collapsed, Shaffer said he went to the apartment building and told workers, “Get away. You’re going to die.”
Sunday, at 3:30 p.m., less than two hours before it collapsed, he warned workers at the site of 324 Main St. that they needed to leave.

“We were here working all day," he said, referring to his work at the former Antonella's location. "Literally, we were just waiting for the building to drop."

Social media users this week questioned why the status of that final inspection on the city’s website changed. On Monday, as viewed through an internet archived site, the city’s site listed the May 25 inspection as “passed.” Now, that same inspection status is “failed.”

City officials attributed this to a system “glitch” that the city is working to correct. The site “shows any inspection marked as ‘Incomplete’ with a fail/error message” Chief Strategy Officer Sarah Ott wrote in an email and included screenshots of the internal systems.

“This is not a failed inspection but an incomplete inspection since no re-inspection could be completed,” she wrote.

Select Structural Engineering, of Bettendorf, was hired by Wold to advise on work being done on the building in the past year. City officials said the engineering firm had determined that the building was structurally sound for tenants to stay in while the exterior work was being done.

There were other documents from one of the contractors indicating numerous problems with the building, and the other contractor said that he was standing and watching just waiting for it to collapse. It's too bad they couldn't issue an evacuation order to get everyone out before it collapsed.

There was also a discrepancy on the city's website, first showing the building passed inspection, and then that it failed - which city officials blamed on a glitch.

And why would the building inspector say it's safe when another local contractor said that it was so close to collapse that he had to warn workers to get out of there and stay away because "you're going to die"?

Something is totally messed up about this whole situation.

 

[Twilight Hue]

It's called people wanting to pocket the money for themselves rather than spend it on infrastructure.

 

[Stevicus]

It's called people wanting to pocket the money for themselves rather than spend it on infrastructure.

Greed can often have disastrous consequences.

 

[Stevicus]

WATCH: Davenport officials hold press conference on building collapse

City leaders provided an update on the partial collapse of a Davenport apartment Thursday afternoon

www.kcrg.com

 

[Revoltingest]

Greed can often have disastrous consequences.

And government incompetence & corruption.
This was a perfect storm of wrongful acts.

 

[Brickjectivity]

Something is totally messed up about this whole situation.

It is murder by negligence. That is what is messed up.

 

[Brickjectivity]

And government incompetence & corruption.

Yes almost certainly someone took a bribe at the inspection office if its true about this pass/fail change on their web site and this 'Glitch'.

 

[Revoltingest]

Yes almost certainly someone took a bribe at the inspection office if its true about this pass/fail change on their web site and this 'Glitch'.

Hard to say.
Inspectors often don't know as much as they should.
A problem we've dealt with before.

 

[Brickjectivity]

Hard to say.
Inspectors often don't know as much as they should.
A problem we've dealt with before.

Yes, it is hard to say unless evidence for a bribe is found.

 

[Stevicus]

'Do I have regrets? ... Hell yeah,' says Davenport mayor after partial collapse of Iowa building

A structural engineer report issued just days before an Iowa apartment building partially collapsed indicated a wall of the century-old structure was in imminent risk of crumbling. But neither the owner nor city officials warned residents of the danger days before the building partially...

apnews.com

There are still three people unaccounted for, though authorities believe there was a high probability that they were in their apartments at the time, and they were in the collapse zone. The building owner has been fined $300 and will be required to pay for the demolition.

The state’s search and rescue team, search dogs and cameras were used Thursday to continue combing the building for missing people. Matson said crews were also consulting with experts about how to safely bring down the structure, which remains extremely unstable, while being respectful of bodies that could be buried in the debris.

The six-story building collapsed shortly before 5 p.m. Sunday. Rescue crews pulled seven people from the building in their initial response and escorted out 12 others who could walk on their own. Later, two more people were rescued, including a woman who was removed from the fourth floor hours after authorities said they were going to begin setting up for demolition.

Earlier this week, authorities said five people were missing, but Davenport Police Chief Jeff Bladel said during a media briefing Thursday that two of them have since been accounted for and are safe.

City officials named those unaccounted for as Brandon Colvin, Ryan Hitchcock and Daniel Prien. The city said all three “have high probability of being home at the time of the collapse and their apartments were located in the collapse zone.”

People living in the building will be eligible for $6,000 payments from the city and those meeting certain income requirements could get state payments of $5,000. Businesses near the collapsed building will also be eligible to receive payments.

These payments seem rather meager compared to the $4.2 million the owner used to purchase the building (and then trying to chisel on a $50,000 repair job). If he had enough money to buy the building, then he had enough money to repair it properly.

The city officials said they didn't order an evacuation sooner because they were relying on an engineer's report that the building was safe. However, other documents (some dated just days before the collapse) indicated otherwise:

The city on Wednesday night released documents, including structural engineering reports, that show city officials and the building’s owner were warned that parts of the building were unstable.

A report dated May 24, just four days before the collapse, suggested patches in the west side of the building’s brick façade “appear ready to fall imminently” and could be a safety hazard.

The report also detailed that window openings, some filled and some unfilled, were insecure. In one case, the openings were “bulging outward” and looked “poised to fall.” Inside the first floor, unsupported window openings help “explain why the façade is currently about to topple outward.”

The chief building official was responsible for the computer glitch. She originally reported that it passed inspection but then attempted to change it to incomplete on the Tuesday after the collapse.

Despite the warnings, city officials did not order some 50 tenants to leave the building.

Rich Oswald, the city’s director of development and neighborhood services, confirmed Thursday that the city’s chief building official, Trishna Pradhan, resigned earlier this week in the aftermath of the collapse.

Pradhan had visited the building on May 25, and erroneously reported it had “passed” an inspection in notes in the city’s online permitting system, Oswald said.

Pradhan attempted to change the inspection result to “incomplete” on Tuesday — after the collapse — but a technical glitch instead listed the outcome as “failed,” he said. Oswald said the “incomplete” status is the correct status since the repair work was unfinished.

Though the error was administrative, Oswald said the “magnitude of the situation and the error that was made” led to Pradhan’s resignation.

Andrew Wold, the building’s owner, released a statement dated Tuesday saying “our thoughts and prayers are with our tenants.” County records show his company, Davenport Hotel, L.L.C., acquired the building in a 2021 deal worth $4.2 million.

As the building deteriorated, tenants repeatedly complained about a host of other problems they say were ignored by property managers, including no heat or hot water for weeks or months at a time, mold and water leakage from ceilings and toilets. City officials gave orders to vacate some individual apartments and tried to address other complaints, but a broader building evacuation was never ordered, records show.

City officials ordered repairs after they found seven fire code violations on Feb. 6. They were told three weeks later by building maintenance officials that “none of the work was completed,” records show.

Assistant City Attorney Brian Heyer said he’s unaware whether earlier civil enforcement actions to protect residents were considered. Only after the collapse did the city file a civil infraction seeking a $300 fine against Wold for failing to maintain the structure in a safe manner. He will be required to pay for the cost of demolition, Heyer said.

Heyer said an enforcement action the city filed that resulted in a $4,500 fine in March for repeated trash overflows came in response to complaints from downtown residents and businesses about the debris.

Emails sent to an attorney believed to be representing Wold have not been returned.

The documents released Wednesday outline numerous other concerns raised by engineers, a utility company and city officials. Among them, MidAmerican Energy, an electric and gas utility, complained to the city in early February about an unsafe brick wall at the west corner of the building. A city notice dated Feb. 2 said the wall was gradually failing and cited “visible crumbling of this exterior load bearing wall under the support beam.” The notice also said the exterior brick veneer had separated and allowed rain and ice to cause damage.

The notice ordered Davenport Hotel to provide an engineer’s letter “stating this is not an imminent danger” and to take immediate steps to repair the problems.

A Feb. 8 letter to the city from engineering company Select Structural said an engineer conducted an emergency site visit Feb. 2 and determined the crumbling wall “is not an imminent threat to the building or its residents, but structural repairs will be necessary.”

City inspectors monitored progress at the site and learned Feb. 28 that “the west wall has collapsed into the scaffolding.”

The owner and city building inspector should, at minimum, be charged with negligent homicide.

 

[Stevicus]

MSN

 

[Subduction Zone]

A cautionary tale for those that complain about the "nanny state".

 

[Stevicus]

Cracked floors, bowed walls: Many warnings but no action at Iowa building before deadly collapse

It seems everyone from the structural engineer to city officials to tenants had concerns about the 116-year-old Davenport apartment building. But no one ordered residents out, and it was only when a section of the six-story building tumbled to the ground on May 28 that everyone seemed to connect...

apnews.com