Global Courant 2023-04-30 02:56:32
Following the deadly collapse of a parking garage in Lower Manhattan, New York City construction officials raided dozens of parking garages and ordered four of them to close immediately due to structural defects that “deteriorated to the point where they now posed an imminent threat to public safety.”
Two of the parking garages have apartments above them — a 25-story high-rise in midtown Manhattan and an eight-story building in Chinatown — but officials said the residential areas appear to be in no danger.
City officials ordered the owners of the parking facilities to immediately repair corroded concrete and other damage.
The inspections were launched shortly after a three-story detached parking garage, about a century old, imploded into shards of concrete and twisted metal on April 18, crushing its manager.
“This work has been done in the interest of public safety and out of an abundance of caution,” said Andrew Rudansky, spokesman for the Department of Buildings.
“In our examination of 78 parking structures, we found four locations where structural problems necessitated immediate evacuation of parts of the buildings,” he said.
The city began requiring parking structures to be inspected by owners every six years last year. The first wave of garages, located from the southern tip of Manhattan to lower Central Park, has until the end of the year to complete initial inspections.
The structure that collapsed earlier this month had not yet completed the required inspection, city officials said.
Why it collapsed is still under investigation, but the building had previously been named due to several structural defects, including signs of corrosion in concrete called “splitting.”
Two decades ago, city inspectors cited the property’s owner for failing to maintain the building properly, when they found “cracks and defects” in the concrete. A more recent inspection in fall 2013 showed no further structural problems, construction officials said.
The garage, a few blocks from City Hall and the Brooklyn Bridge, collapsed as the first trickles of customers began returning to the garage after work.
The collapse shook nearby buildings and frightened people who described the sound of the falling structure as a massive explosion and compared the experience to a violent earthquake.
Enterprise Ann Parking, which operated the Ann Street garage, said it was cooperating with authorities on the investigation.
Inspectors have now visited 17 parking garages managed by the same company, as well as 61 other buildings with parking garages with outstanding architectural listings.
They found four properties with structural damage in the parking garages where the damage was so bad that the city issued evacuation notices for at least parts of the buildings.
Beneath the 25-story building in Lower Manhattan, inspectors found concrete slabs “severely corroded, with splintered concrete on the underside of two-story ceilings.” As a result, more than half of the garage is now off limits and operators have been ordered to build protected trails in those places.
But engineers did not consider it necessary to leave residential areas of the building.
Similarly, construction officials said residents were able to stay in a Chinatown apartment building despite finding “numerous severely deteriorated and rusted steel beams, with excessively cracked and crumbling concrete piers.”
A two-story parking garage in Brooklyn was in such bad shape, the city said, that shuttering of the entire structure was ordered. Another two-story building in the neighborhood was partially closed due to heavily corroded beams and deteriorating vehicular ramps.
The four buildings cannot reopen until repairs are made and inspection passed.
As parking garage inspections continue, officials said more enforcement action may be forthcoming.
Meanwhile, the crews continue to clear debris from the fallen structure.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has opened an investigation into the collapse.
An initial investigation by the construction service found that all three floors of the garage have collapsed in whole or in part. The back wall of the garage partially collapsed and the front facade bulged out.
