3-story parking garage partially collapses in NJ, trapping at least 1 person inside

NJ parking garage collapses, trapping at least 1

HACKENSACK, N.J. — A glass canopy attached to a high-rise condominium building fell onto a parking garage two stories below on Friday, partially collapsing the underground structure and trapping at least one person, authorities said.

Using a remote-controlled camera, rescuers could see the victim in a car on the first level down but couldn’t get to the person because they were concerned about the possibility of another collapse at the three-story garage, Hackensack fire Lt. Stephen Lindner said. They could not determine the victim’s condition.

Crews were clearing debris and shoring up the structure before they could attempt to rescue the victim.

“We are absolutely making progress” in getting to the victim, Lindner said. “We have engineers on the scene, but right now it looks like the building is structurally sound.”

Authorities were checking out whether another person might also be trapped, Lindner said. Surveillance cameras detected a car in motion on the lowest level of the garage around the time of the collapse, but authorities weren’t sure whether the driver made it out, he said.

The garage pancaked when the canopy fell on it, damaging vehicles. The top of the garage, level with the street, was littered with dirt, debris and glass, and the pavement split into chunks.

Rachel LaValle, 26, said she was driving out of the garage and had reached the street level when she noticed a cloud of thick white dust. Mistaking it for smoke, she got out of her car to check for a fire. Then, seeing through the dust to the part of the garage that had collapsed, she got back in her car, shifted it into reverse, parked and ran out of the garage.

She saw water spilling out of pipes and a big hole where part of the garage had once stood.

“There was still dirt coming down at me,” she said.

It’s unclear why the canopy fell from the 22-year-old building, which is adjacent to the garage. Several residents said workers had uprooted a tree between the street and the building within the past few months, and that a leak in the basement was being fixed.

Resident Chris Baldo was in his first-floor unit when he felt the building shake. He looked out his window and the garage “was just gone,” he said.

Irene Casapulla, who lives on the second floor, said she heard “a bunch of thumping, and all of a sudden it sounded like an earthquake.”

All residents were evacuated as a precaution and weren’t expected to be allowed to return before Sunday at the earliest, Lindner said. Some were briefly let back in to retrieve pets and medications.

Residents in surrounding buildings were allowed to stay in their apartments but prohibited from driving in the area; emergency crews worried vibrations could cause further damage.

One firefighter was wheeling a luggage cart stacked with cases of water for emergency workers out in the 90-degree heat.

Tax records show the condo tower was built in 1988. Equity Residential Properties of Chicago bought in 1998 for $36.3 million.

Marty McKenna, a spokesman for Equity Residential, said the building owner did not have much information yet about what happened.

“We’re trying to let the fire department do what they do,” he said.

Jon Morrison, a structural engineer at CVM Engineers in Oaks, Pa., saw video of the collapse on the news.

He said the video made him wonder if one of the main columns supporting the structure may have failed first, rather than the glass canopy.

He said recent heavy rains could have weighed down the landscaping on the ground level, and that the foundation could have been undermined. Once a column goes, he said, it would be easy for parking decks to collapse.

He said it’s rare for a completed structure to fail. “Once they’re up for five minutes,” Morrison said, “they tend to stay for 50 years.”

Associated Press writer Geoff Mulvihill in Haddonfield, N.J., contributed to this report.