1 Person Injured As Bricks Fall From Carrick Building, Owner Cited
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CARRICK (KDKA) – One person was injured when bricks fell from an apartment building in Carrick Monday morning.
It wasn't long after city workers closed the 2000 block of Dellrose Street that a three-foot high section across the top of the old Stanley Parlors building collapsed, sending hundreds of bricks crashing to the street below and creating a huge cloud of dust in the neighborhood.
"Act of Mother Nature. She's not been kind to us, any of us this year," added Jeff Jackson, the building's owner.
The building was originally built in 1929. A combination of age and extremely wet weather may have been contributing factors to the collapse.
The 100-foot long building has a flat roof. It appears the only major damage was to a wall in the back along Dellrose Street.
"Seems to be the excessive rain, and the building decided, the façade, the bricks in the back decided that it had had enough and decided, unfortunately, to come tumbling down," said Jackson.
One person was hit by a flying brick, but not seriously injured.
Neighbor Don McNiel says it could have been a lot worse.
"There's a lot of kids, and the fellow that works on his cars down there, he's usually working on his cars at 10 o'clock and that's exactly when it happened," said McNiel.
Thirteen people live in the building, and three apartments were occupied at the time of the collapse.
Tenants were evacuated, but they were allowed back inside after inspectors determined that only the back wall of the building was dangerous.
Initially, the building was condemned, but city inspectors went through the structure and decided the front of the building, where the tenants live, was safe.
Inspectors say only a small part of the back of the building was impacted structurally. The bar in the front was also not affected, but the city Department of Permits, Licenses and Inspection cited the owner and ordered a structural engineers' report and plans for remediation.
"There's not much we can do about it except stay calm, work through the process, get things done so everybody's safe and sound," Jackson said.
