A firefighter is in the hospital after sustaining injuries during a building collapse that also damaged a few cars in Manchester Wednesday evening.
The fire department said they responded to a partial building collapse on Thompson Avenue. Crews found the brick façade of a condominium in the area had fallen.
The façade appears to have fallen on two to three cars in the parking lot. Officials said a responding firefighter was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment of minor injuries.
No one else was hurt. Residents were temporarily evacuated, but the building has since been deemed structurally OK and safe for occupancy.
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Fire crews believe the collapse happened spontaneously. It's the third time a façade collapse happened at the building, according to officials.
“We did have an engineer come and inspect the property after a similar situation happened about four years ago. Unfortunately, this area didn’t make the list of the areas that they were concerned about,” Steve Cabaniss, the East Meadow Condominium property manager, said.
The inspection led to some updates for other buildings on the property.
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"It sounded like thunder hit the building. It felt like the whole building was coming down, like you could feel the rumbling and it just sounded like cracking and breaking," said Tyler Bertrand of Manchester.
Bertrand was inside a unit at the time right next to the affected wall. While he didn't know exactly what had happened right away, he realized something was wrong and alerted those he was with.
"As soon as that happened I was like, 'Dude, get out,' I told her, 'Get out. Get out, get out now' and we rushed outside and that's when I saw this," Bertrand said.
Jessintha Lara said firefighters were knocking at her door, telling her to get out. She was waiting outside for word with her grandmother and her cat named Abby.
"She's anxious. She's not really vibing right now. She wants to go home. I want to go home. Grandma wants to go home," Lara said.
The building inspector said they are now going to require the condo complex to abate bricks. It appears as though the support for bricks is rusted, according to officials.
“They’re concerned about the condition of the cleats that hold the brick, and they’ve asked us to hire an engineer to inspect the entire property so we can do something more proactively next time,” Cabaniss said.
Crews will likely have to remove all brick façade on most of the buildings in the complex. The incident remains under investigation.
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