Mayor: One dead in Philadelphia building collapse

A building that was being torn down collapsed with a thunderous boom Wednesday, raining bricks on a neighboring thrift store, killing a woman and injuring at least 13 other people in an accident that witnesses said was bound to happen.

The woman who died was 35 years old, the mayor said, but no other information about her was released.

Rescuers pulled another woman, trapped amid the rubble of a Salvation Army thrift store, after they heard her voice, city fire Commissioner Lloyd Ayers said, and the search for survivors continued hours after the 10:45 a.m. collapse on the edge of downtown.

Rescuers used buckets and their bare hands to move bricks and rubble.

“We do not know how many people were actually in the thrift store this morning when the wall collapsed on the building,” Mayor Michael Nutter said late Wednesday afternoon.

Survivors were taken to hospitals with minor injuries, Ayers said.

The collapse involved an empty building that once housed a first-floor sandwich shop and apartments above. The thrift shop was on one side. The other side was an adult bookstore and theater that had been taken down within the past few months.

Several witnesses said they had been casting a wary eye on the demolition site and questioned how the workers were tackling the job. That raised questions about how closely the highly visible spot on Market Street — one of Philadelphia’s signature boulevards — was being monitored.

Roofer Patrick Glynn said he had been watching workers take down the doomed building over the past few weeks, and said he suspected a collapse was inevitable because of the methods the workers were using.

“For weeks they’ve been standing on the edge, knocking bricks off,” he said. “You could just see it was ready to go at any time. I knew it was going to happen.”

Glynn and Anthony Soli were working on a roof atop a nearby building when they heard what sounded like two loud bangs or explosions. They immediately ran down the scaffolding and helped pull out two women and a man.

Steve Cramer, who has been working as a window washer across the street for several days, said the demolition crew left 30 feet of a dividing wall up with no braces, and it compromised the integrity of the building

“We’ve been calling it for the past week — it’s going to fall, it’s going to fall,” his co-worker Dan Gillis said.

There were no existing violations on the building and the demolition company had proper permits for the work they were doing, according to Carlton Williams of the city’s Department of Licenses and Inspections.

The city issued a demolition permit for the four-story structure on Feb. 1. Online records list the contractor as Plato Marinakos Jr., an architect. He said Campbell Construction was handling the demolition. A message was left at a listing for Campbell Construction in Philadelphia.

A demolition expert wondered what precautions were taken to protect the Salvation Army store, especially since it remained open. Stephen Estrin, a Florida contractor who has testified as an expert at several trials involving building collapses, also questioned whether the demolition was being done by hand or with machinery. A piece of equipment with a claw device was seen amid the debris Wednesday.

“One of the problems with claw work is it sets up a vibration in the walls,” Estrin said.