[ProtectOurFreedom]

The city said its investigation into the sudden partial collapse on Monday of the seven-story Morris Heights apartment building is ongoing, but that it found that the inspector had instructed contractors doing work on the property to remove bricks on the support beam, but not to install temporary supports first.

That doesn't pass the smell test. A city INSPECTOR gave demolition instructions to the CONTRACTORS? And the contractors listened to the inspector's advice on the structure?

I cannot imagine that is SOP anywhere.

[Drago]

More bad journalism/writing....city engineer/inspector/code enforcement (whatever the local NY name is) marked the beam as “non-load bearing” so the contractor doing whatever work they were doing didn’t support the beam properly. (Not necessarily “demolition” work?)