ORLANDO, FLA. (WSVN) – Hundreds of people in Central Florida have been forced out of their homes after cracks were found throughout an apartment building.<\/p>\n
Crews broke down doors to rush everyone outside The Rialto, a five-story complex in southwest Orlando, Thursday morning. Now they have no idea when they\u2019ll get back inside.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey said it could be hours, and it could be never,\u201d said a resident<\/p>\n
That\u2019s how long one woman said she was told it could be before she could go home.<\/p>\n
She was able to leave her Orlando apartment on her own, but others weren\u2019t as lucky.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey had to break the door to get me out,\u201d said Arlene Aguirre.<\/p>\n
Following an inspection, the unstable building was evacuated.<\/p>\n
Kelsey Morris was one of the hundreds forced out.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u201dIt was pretty jarring leaving. There definitely was some cracks,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Morris said she saw photos, like the ones shared by Orange County Fire Rescue, that showed cracks in other parts of the building.<\/p>\n
\u201cI definitely recognized that some of those were on the floor that I was living on and had noticed, but I guess at that time I didn\u2019t really think much of it, and now, seeing it with the rest of the context we have, yeah, it\u2019s a little frightening,\u201d said Morris.<\/p>\n
Ron Devlen, an engineer, voiced concerns when saw the cracks.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, that\u2019s definitely a settlement type of crack,\u201d said Devlen. \u201cIn the picture at the moment, it\u2019s a relatively tight crack, so it could potentially be the sign that something more serious is to come, so it\u2019s certainly a warning sign. You don\u2019t want to let that go.\u201d<\/p>\n
Devlen stressed this is an issue that can get worse quickly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sure they were able to open their door the day before, or even hours before, so that makes it more serious. It\u2019s an indication that this has developed pretty quickly,\u201d said Devlen.<\/p>\n
Other places in the area \u2014 including a fitness club, a spa and a FedEx Office \u2014 have also been closed.<\/p>\n
Engineers have been on-site over the weekend and are evaluating conditions.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 Sunbeam Television Corp. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.<\/p>\n
\tJoin our Newsletter for the latest news right to your inbox<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, FLA. (WSVN) – Hundreds of people in Central Florida have been forced out of their homes after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202770,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[139,141,140],"class_list":["post-202769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}