These were not just SMALL structural flaws they were HUGE structural flaws which should have been extremely concerning to anyone!! I can’t honestly believe that people who lived there seeing the damage in the garage EVERYDAY continued to live there!!
There is a well known psychological phenomenon called normalcy bias.
Basically, people subconsciously rely on other people for cues. If they don’t see others fleeing, they won’t either. People will sit at slot machines with billows of smoke surrounding them and fire alarms blaring, but if nobody else is running away they will stay put unless the machine shuts off, and even then you might have to tell them there are free t-shirts and cocktails out in the parking lot.
And they tend to think that since nothing bad has happened any of the other times they’ve seen something that obvious, that nothing bad will happen anytime soon.