Posted on 05/29/2023 6:45:06 AM PDT by lowbridge
Rescue operations were underway Sunday evening after part of an apartment building collapsed in the eastern Iowa city of Davenport.
Authorities have not said whether anyone was killed.
Authorities said people were treated for injuries at the scene but did not detail how many.
Rescuers were called to the scene shortly before 5 p.m. Sunday.
Fire crews rescued seven people and escorted more than a dozen others from the building in their initial response, Davenport Fire Chief Michael Carlsten said at a news conference.
Carlsten said the back of the six-story apartment complex collapsed and had separated from the building, which houses apartments on the upper floors and businesses on the ground level.
Authorities found a gas leak after the collapse while water also had leaked throughout the floors of the structure, Carlsten added.
First responders were still searching for people who were unaccounted for Sunday.
The stability of the building was a concern following secondary collapses while rescuers were at the scene, Carlsten noted.
-snip
City officials said Sunday that they had several complaints from residents about needed repairs.
Jennifer Smith, co-owner of Fourth Street Nutrition, said she learned of the explosion from her husband, who works for Mid-American Energy.
“He was on call and got called in for a building explosion downtown. We had no idea it was our building,” she said. “It sounds bad, but we have been calling the city and giving complaints since December. Our bathroom caved in December.”
Smith said water damage has been apparent since they moved into their space in the winter.
The company’s co-owner, Deonte Mack, said fire crews were in the building as recently as Thursday for an inspection.
“The tenants told us the building was going to collapse,” Smith said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Rescue? From the pictures, I think recovery is more accurate.
Looks like authorities are blaming a nat gas leak.
Not sure how nat gas cooking off could do that...
Natural gas?
I’m guessing years of water damage weakened the building?
My bet is the local gas company has deeper pockets than the building owner and/or local water board.
Yeah, more likely it was commiseration between building code people and the owners to let one more year pass without structural review and upkeep.
3rd world
Reminds me of the Oklahoma City building that was bombed.
Yes, and no crater out front.
Once you lose the integrity of construction on a multi-story building, gravity does much.
The article stated there was repair being done to the outside. Bricks falling off & being repaired. Apparently that was a symptom of what eventually collapsed that portion of the building.
Another post suggested water damage. That sounds like a real possibility.
It’s Davenport.
Not arguing, just agreeing.
That’s a very plausible possibility. But how it would go unnoticed to create that kind of compromise seems strange. But definitely not impossible.
Yeah similar, but obviously it wasn’t caused by an explosion because no one reported hearing an explosion. My initial thought was a gas explosion. But the debris wasn’t blow outward, it just collapsed down upon itself.
Yep, just like that high rise condo collapsing in Florida a while back.
That’s the impression I got too — years of water damage weakening the structure. According to the article tenants have complained about water damage, with one business owner saying her bathroom had collapsed.
That was a foundation problem. The floor started cracking and it stated leaning. But it could be something like that, but it doesn’t see to be leaning. Another person suggest water damage. Water damage is a real possibility, and it might also have attracted termites, which finally reached a severe level of compromise, that finally caused failure.
I saw the mention that there was water soaking into the floors after I posted to you. Enough water to cause a compromised structure to collapse? Interesting.
Thanks for confirming & relaying what you saw in the article. I missed it, probably because of the way it was written with pictures scattered thru out the text. 👍
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