Iowa building collapse - latest: Davenport authorities quit rubble search for missing despite family pleas

A contractor has said he warned the owner of the residential building that collapsed in downtown Davenport, Iowa, on Sunday that the disaster was imminent.

Speaking to The Quad-Cities Times, Ryan Shaffer, co-owner of local firm RA Masonry, said he was working on another building close to the six-storey 324 Main Street complex when he was approached by the latter property’s owner, Andrew Wold, about potential work, only for Mr Wold to walk away saying the quote was too high.

“He wanted to cut the cost by cutting out the shoring and supporting of the building,” Mr Shaffer said.

“I said, ‘If we don’t do it this way exactly, I’m not putting my guys in there. Somebody is going to die.’”

Mr Wold appears to have subsequently shopped around for a cheaper firm to carry out the work and found an alternative business that would do it for less, as reflected by city records.

While Lexus Berry escaped the collapsed on Sunday, her wife Quanishia and their two cats became trapped under the rubble.

The Independent has more:

When permit records for an Iowa building that collapsed this past weekend were mysteriously changed after the tragedy, city officials blamed a “computer glitch”. Skeptical members of the community aren’t convinced it was a mistake.

Five tenants are still unaccounted for after a large portion of a six-storey apartment complex in Davenport fell down on Sunday night. Authorities have said they now face a challenging decision as engineers warned another collapse of the remaining structure is “imminent” - but at least two men, Ryan Hitchcock and Branden Davis, are feared to be trapped in the existing wreckage.

The announcement of demolition plans less than 24 hours after the collapse, before city officials even acknowledged they had been unable to locate several residents, sparked outrage within the community who as protesters gathered at the site. The eleventh-hour rescue of a tenant who had passed out under a couch and awoke to the sound of family yelling her name also heightened concern that the men could be alive under the rubble.

Lisa Brooks’ family tell The Independent: ‘She had passed out under the couch and the only reason she woke up is because we were yelling her name.’

Elizabeth Pruitt, an intern at The Quad-Cities Times, had moved into The Davenport less than 24 hours before its collapse. Ms Pruitt, originally from Missouri, saw the listing online, said she felt the images she saw in the online listings and on a videocall with the property management were not how the building really looked inside.

“The first thing I notice when I walk in the building is how gross it is, how unclean it is. And I don’t mean it hasn’t been cleaned in a month. It truly seems like it hasn’t been cleaned in years,” she told the Times.

Ms Pruitt, who had brought her cat Lulu in the move, left to go to Target on Sunday evening. When she returned, the rear part of her building was gone.

“I said, ‘That’s my building.’ And I just break down. I rushed to the cop that’s near me, and I’m trying to get information and he doesn’t tell me anything. He just tells me a building collapsed,” Ms Pruitt said. “I tell him, ‘That’s my apartment. My stuff’s inside. My cat’s inside.’ And he just says, ‘Well I can’t let you in. Nobody’s going in.’”

Her biggest worry was Lulu, Ms Pruitt said. And for nearly 48 hours, she anxiously waited for updates until a coworker informed her the Humane Society of Scott County had rescued her.

“All I read was, ‘We have Lulu,’ and I cried,” she said.

Ms Pruitt is receiving donations through a GoFundMe to cover her losses.

A survivor of the partially collapsed building in Davenport, Iowa, has revealed her wife had her leg amputated by rescuers trying to save her.

Lexus and Quanishia Berry were taking pictures of a crack between a wall and the bathroom doorway when the rear part of their building came down around 5pm on Sunday. Lexus was standing on a part of the structure that didn’t collapse, but in a matter of seconds, her wife and two cats disappeared under the rubble.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, first responders worked tirelessly to evacuate tenants, initially rescuing seven people from the wreckage. For the first 12 hours that authorities were unable to locate Quanishia, her wife stayed in the area, anxiously waiting for updates and holding onto hope that Quanishia had survived the ordeal.

On Monday morning, search crews finally located Quanishia, who was trapped under debris.

Officials are accessing whether further searches are possible as the wreckage poses a significant safety risk for crews who may enter, Davenport Fire Marshal Jim Morris said.

“You can’t run up to a pile of bricks and rocks and just start throwing things off – as much as we want to,” Mr Morris said at Tuesday’s news conference.

“It’s not that we don’t want to do this. It’s the fact that we have to do it in a safe manner. … We’re going to reevaluate how safe we can be in order to get in there and not currently make the situation any worse.”

Three residents of an Iowa apartment building that partially collapsed on Sunday are still unaccounted for, Davenport Police Chief Jeff Bladel said Thursday.

Earlier this week, authorities said five people were missing, but Bladel said during a Thursday morning media briefing that two of them have since been contacted and are safe. One moved out a month ago and was found in Texas, and the other was found locally.

The six-story building partially collapsed shortly before 5 p.m. Sunday. The city has since released documents, including structural engineering reports, that show the building’s owner was told that patches of the brick façade were separating from the building.

The city has been in contact with the building owner Andrew Wold, Mr Morris said on Tuesday.

State agencies are coordinating what agency will take the lead in the investigation but no criminal charges have been filed yet.

Iowa court records reviewed by The Independent on Wednesday show that Mr Wold and Davenport Hotel LLC are listed as defendants in a civil enforcement action brought by the City of Davenport on 30 May.

Mr Wold was given a $300 fine for failing to keep the building “safe, sanitary and structurally sound condition,” WQAD reports.