Our hearts go out to the community of Davenport, dealing with a partial building collapse from over the Memorial Day weekend.
It is a reminder of the importance of building inspections conducted from times to times, as well as local officials following up on those recommendations to keep buildings safe for those who inhabit them. The reporting by multiple journalists, especially the Quad City Times and Iowa Public Radio, have kept the public informed and unturned a lot of building inspections and citations that the property faced over the years.
The tough thing to witness is how avoidable this situation was, especially in the last two weeks before the building collapsed. That if fire departments had raised alarms on the bowing exterior wall, people could have been saved. That there were structural issues with the building identified in 2020 that only got worse this year, even after work started to make needed repairs.
People died in the collapse. People were injured as well. And the city was rushing to tear the building down instead of searching for more survivors, more worried about impact to other locations, until public outrage about doing the search first before the demolition happened.
Our local communities should heed what Davenport has done and learn from the mistakes made in this instance, and maybe start evaluating buildings that are structurally compromised and keep vigilant to make sure those repairs progress before a similar tragedy unfolds. This past year, Mount Vernon removed some buildings along Hwy. 30 in an agreement with a developer that protected a more historic building and keep the downtown and city safe from those buildings collapsing.
Sun Editorial: Learn from Davenport apartment collapse to avoid similar instances locally
June 8, 2023