Hundreds of people are still waiting to get their cars from a massive, 14-story parking garage where the roof collapsed earlier this week, damaging some vehicles on the floor below but causing no injuries.
According to White Plains Mayor Thomas Roach, the privately owned garage is a 785,000-square-foot structure that accommodates office tenants on South Broadway (also known as Westchester One). A roughly 1,200 square-foot concrete section of the fifth-floor parking deck collapsed onto the fourth-floor parking deck. “
That collapsed piece is a bit smaller than the size of a regulation court.
It wasn’t immediately clear how many vehicles were inside the garage at the time of the 9 a.m. collapse on Hale Avenue near South Broadway. Aerial views showed the center of the roof level having caved in. Fortunately, no injuries were reported. About 15 cars were in the immediate affected zone, officials said.
The entire garage has to be shut down to stabilize the building and conduct an investigation, meaning all the other drivers who had parked there, whether their cars were damaged or not, had no access to vehicles.
Roach didn’t have a precise timeline. He said the building owner is working to have the vehicles removed from the garage. There will be phased removals, and the owner of each car will be identified and contacted prior to its removal, the mayor said.
“The duration of time required to remove all the vehicles has not been established at this time. Please note that the safety of all those allowed on the premises is the priority,” Roach added. “The garage is closed to both pedestrian and vehicular traffic until further notice.”
The cause and origin of the collapse remain under investigation.
“I looked to the right and there was a huge sinkhole in the parking garage floor,” said Siobhan Rossi, who works in the high-rise next door and managed to drive away from the fifth floor before the garage was shut down.
“It was very nerve wracking. I didn’t know which way to go, if it was a secure structure or leave. I have small kids at home, God forbid,” she said.
City officials were grateful the collapse occurred at the time that it did — because had it been an hour earlier, as people were coming into work, the situation could have been different.
“If it was 8:30 in the morning, who knows what would have happened,” said White Plains Commissioner of Public Safety David E. Chong. “So we are blessed that there wasn’t anybody inside the garage.”