3 floors fall in parking garage

No one was hurt, but downtown St. Petersburg workers hear quite the rumble and the construction site is closed for now.

By ADAM C. SMITH and STEPHEN HEGARTY

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 27, 2000

ST. PETERSBURG -- Three floors of a seven-story parking garage under construction in downtown St. Petersburg collapsed Friday, sending office workers scrambling to their windows for a peek but causing no injuries.

Officials with the city and the construction company said human error appeared to be the cause.

A contractor mistakenly removed support plates stabilizing a 60-foot-long piece of the fourth floor while realigning it, they said. Without those plates, the 45,000-pound slab toppled and took down parts of the third and second floors below it.

"I could feel the rumbling in my office. It went, BABOOM! BABOOM! BABOOM!" said lawyer David Sockol, who ran to his 14th floor window in the Republic Bank building a block away. "The dust cloud was covering the whole site, and you couldn't see anything for about 30 seconds. I was just hoping nobody got hurt."

No one did, but the site remains closed until the city hires an independent engineer to determine precisely what happened. An OSHA investigator said Friday evening that no work would resume until the safety of the site could be confirmed, Tuesday at the earliest.

The $12-million garage at First Avenue N between First and Second streets is the city's contribution to the much-heralded BayWalk redevelopment project, which will feature movie theaters, restaurants and stores. The developers and city officials doubted the mishap will delay the scheduled November opening.

City officials expressed relief Friday evening that the problem appeared to be human error, rather than the prospect of a structural problem that had slipped by daily inspections of the project.

"Definitely, the lesser of two evils is having human error, instead of a structural problem," said city engineer Mike Connors.

The 1,380-space garage is basically being built like a giant Erector set. Some 1,600 concrete pieces are cast 125 miles from St. Petersburg, at Dura-Stress Inc. in Leesburg, then trucked in and connected in downtown St. Petersburg.

"Large projects like this are a lot more dangerous than people think," said Randy Wedding, the St. Petersburg architect who designed the garage. "In the process of putting it together, it's still very fragile. Once it's finished, once it's buttoned up, it's very strong."

The fourth-floor piece that started the collapse wasn't buttoned up.

Officials with the general contractor, Irwin Contracting, with Dura-Stress, and with the city, said it was resting atop a support protruding from the wall and temporarily welded in place with support plates.

"This was in an isolated section in an area not completely welded yet," said Glen Switzer of Dura-Stress. "We do temporary welds so we can still move things around. We were working on the final alignments, getting ready for the final welds."

[Times photo: Jonathan Newton] St. Petersburg fire officials and construction workers look over concrete flooring panels that collapsed Friday.

An unidentified worker removed the temporary welds while aligning the slab, apparently not realizing that it would not stay balanced on the wall protrusion.

"Just daydreaming. Who knows?" Innes Irwin of Irwin Contracting, said of the worker, whose whereabouts were not immediately known. "He left we think. He probably left fast."

The collapse in the southeast corner of the garage affected less than 5 percent of the work done, with only seven floor beams crashing down out of hundreds in the structure.

Dozens of fire trucks and ambulances were dispatched to the construction accident. Firefighters and paramedics began arriving shortly before 3:30 p.m., not knowing what to expect.

Their first priority was to account for each of the 15 construction workers who were on the site. Their second priority was to make sure no other parts of the garage were about to collapse.

"I'm sure it was a very unnerving situation to hear that coming down, but no one was hurt," said St. Petersburg Fire Lt. Chris Bengivengo. "I'm sure it shook the ground significantly."

Robert Skutecky, a Dura-Stress welder, was working on the other side of the garage when the floors collapsed.

"I thought it was a big thunderstorm coming," said Skutecky, 27. "And the north side of the building was shaking like an earthquake and everybody ran off."

Workers on scene said they were lucky no one was working on the floors or under them. Members of the crew were checking off for the day, or working on the other side of the garage.

"We're just glad no one got hurt because there were some people working over there an hour ago," said Randall Young, who sets pieces of the garage in place for Dura-Stress.

Said Craig Tucker, a Dura-Stress crane operator: "I've been doing this for a long time. Stuff happens."

Martha Kehm, president of CJM Property Services, was at work in her third floor office in the Chamber of Commerce building when she heard the crash of concrete at the BayWalk garage next door.

"I heard something really big, and it sounded like it was rolling down a steep hill. It was crashing and bumping. When it landed on the ground, there was a really loud noise. It shook this entire building."

Kehm said she figured everybody at the street level was dialing 911 so she called Irwin Contracting, located on Second Street S., just far enough away that no one in the office heard it.

"I said, Molly (Camp, property manager) did you know something had fallen down at the garage?"

At that point, they didn't.

This is the second mishap in the Tampa Bay area connected with the construction of the parking garage.

In April, one of the concrete slabs was being transported to St. Petersburg from Leesburg. The wall panel fell from the bed of a semitrailer on I-275, striking a truck traveling behind it, and damaging the interstate roadway. That mishap caused enough damage so that one of the southbound lanes on I-275 near downtown Tampa had to be shut down for days for repairs.

Mel Sembler is one of the partners in BayWalk and chairman of Sembler Co., which is doing the site development. He said delay on the garage will not affect BayWalk's opening because there is enough parking nearby for the short term.

"The first thing we have got to do is pause and be sure it (the garage) is safe," Sembler said. Although he didn't have all the information on what had happened, he said he thought the delay probably would be short.

-- Staff writers Sharon Bond, Mike Brassfield and Leanora Minai contributed to this report.

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