An Iowa apartment building that partially collapsed faces demolition after 8 people were rescued
By Amanda Jackson and Holly Yan, CNN
(CNN) — An eighth person has been rescued after a six-story apartment building partially collapsed Sunday in Davenport, Iowa, officials said Monday.
The building is expected to be demolished Tuesday, according to a news release from the city. The owners have been served a demolition notice, the release said.
The fire department has shifted from search to recovery mode, the release says.
“Due to the unstable condition of the property, and in the interest of public safety, residents will not be allowed back into the building,” the release said.
No fatalities have been reported, Davenport Fire Chief Mike Carlsten said Monday morning, and “no known individuals are trapped in that facility.”
It’s not clear how many people may be unaccounted for or how many residents are displaced.
Crews were dispatched around 4:55 p.m. Sunday to the apartment building known as The Davenport, Carlsten said. Part of the building’s back section collapsed and detached from the rest of the structure, the fire chief said.
“I live in the building just next to it, and we heard just like a large crash,” Andrew Sommer, a former tenant of The Davenport, told CNN affiliate KWQC. “Shortly after, we went outside and saw the whole section of the building gone.”
The collapse led to “a large natural gas leak” and quite a bit of water gushing in the building, the fire chief said. Crews managed to stop the leaks and resume their search for survivors.
Seven people were rescued Sunday, and more than a dozen others escorted out of the building. An eighth person was found overnight and taken to a hospital, Carlsten said Monday.
The collapse evoked memories of the 2021 condo building collapse in Surfside, Florida, that killed 98 people. And just last month, a New York City parking garage with multiple property violations collapsed, killing one person and injuring at least five others.
The cause of the Iowa collapse has not been determined, officials said. The building’s owners had current permits for repair work for the exterior wall, said Richard Oswald, Davenport’s neighborhood services director.
The city recently suffered severe flooding after the Mississippi River crested, turning some Davenport streets into rivers. The Davenport building is a little more than a quarter mile from the river.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
CNN’s Sara Smart, Taliah Miller and Chris Boyette contributed to this report.
