MORRIS HEIGHTS, Bronx (WABC) — Residents of the building that partially collapsed in the Bronx this week say they want the building owner held accountable.
But first, the building needs to be made safe for the more than 150 residents to return and to figure out why it collapsed in the first place.
Contractors will perform emergency shoring work inside the building on Wednesday and once that is completed, they can start the emergency demolition of the collapsed corner of the building — as pieces of floor and ceilings are still dangling.
Once that is done, tenants can be escorted back to their apartments to retrieve personal belongings left behind.
Some of those belongings include critical items, such as passports, birth certificates, clothes, jewelry and medicine, and it’s not clear when people will be allowed back in to retrieve them.
Tenants are finding that hard, especially when it comes to explaining that to their children.
“Imagine you wake up and they say, ‘I want to go home,’ but what home. Right now we don’t have a place to go,” resident Diana Martinez said.
Kathy Baez’s brother was all packed and ready to move because of all the problems in the building, but now he can’t get in to get all of the things that the family had packed up.
“He told me that they don’t fix anything, that’s why he was about to move,” Baez said. “He got the key to the new apartment today.”
The building collapsed partially Monday afternoon. Surveillance video from an MTA bus showed the sudden and frightening moment.
The collapse prompted a desperate search for life in the rubble, which fortunately found no one trapped underneath.
It’s still not known why the collapse happened, but records show there were facade repair plans in place for March of 2021, originally postponed due to COVID, and despite getting a permit this year, still hadn’t been fixed.
Mike Marza slows down surveillance video and gives us a breakdown of how the Bronx partial building collapse may have happened.
Plus, residents had submitted numerous other complaints. There were more than 100 open building violations, according to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
City officials say they will be looking into changing some oversight policies.
“We’re a city of millions of buildings and 500-something inspectors,” said Meera Joshi, NYC Deputy Mayor for Operations. “So we will never, with boots on the ground, get to every building.”
Mayor Eric Adams said Tuesday that maybe if private building owners did their own inspections instead of the city, it could have been avoided.
“I believe in the concept of having outside individuals that are bonded, certified, go through necessary approvals,” Mayor Eric Adams said. “Making sure we can get those private entities to do so is something I’m going to look at and examine and we can do it and make sure it’s done safely.”
As for the residents, the Red Cross says it has provided 44 households, which is 153 people including children, with emergency housing and other assistance.
ALSO READ | Engineer warned of ‘unsafe’ facade at Morris Heights partially collapsed building
7 On Your Side’s Kristin Thorne has more on the building collapse investigation.
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