One person was injured Saturday after a Midtown parking garage collapsed for the second day in a row, officials said.
Crews responded to the deck at the intersection of West Peachtree Street and Linden Avenue shortly after 1 p.m., Atlanta police spokeswoman Marla Jean Rooker told AJC.com.
One person was trapped in the collapse, police said. They were rescued and taken to Grady Memorial Hospital with leg injuries.
“We believe there was only one person injured," Rooker said. “Everybody else is accounted for.”
Credit: Steve Schaefer
Credit: Steve Schaefer
The deck, which will serve as the new Emory University Hospital Midtown parking lot, also collapsed Friday, injuring five people and trapping one worker.
Authorities said crews returned to the deck on Saturday to reinforce the structure when the second collapse occurred. A beam “pancaked down multiple floors,” trapping the worker, Atlanta Fire Rescue said in a tweet.
Friday’s partial collapse occurred when a portion of the 11th floor fell onto the 10th, authorities said at the scene, but an exact cause wasn’t immediately determined.
Within 18 minutes, everyone who had been temporarily trapped was out of the wreckage and moved to a safer location. Of the five injured workers, four were able to get down on their own. A fifth man was placed on a stretcher and lowered to the ground with a crane after crews lifted him out of the rubble. His legs were also injured, but firefighters said the man never lost consciousness.
Engineers were called in to assess the stability of the parking deck on Friday afternoon, but were apparently unable to keep the structure from collapsing for a second consecutive day. The deck, which is being built by Baston-Cook Construction, is expected to be 16 stories high with 3,000 parking spaces and 16,000 square feet of retail space, Channel 2 Action News reported.
— Please return to AJC.com for updates.
About the Author
