Three men who have been missing since a six-story building collapsed on Sunday are feared dead, and city officials have deployed cadaver dogs in a last desperate bid to save them before demolishing the block.
Photographs have been released of Ryan Hitchcock, Branden Colvin and Daniel Prien, who lived in the destroyed block on 324 Main Street Davenport, a city located on the eastern border of the state.
One side of the building caved in on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend just before 5pm, and officials said the men had a ‘high probability of being home at the time of the collapse’.
The three tenants have been listed in the National Database of Missing Persons.
City officials, who sent in rescue teams on Monday, have warned that the building is at risk of collapsing further and it remains highly unstable.
(Left to right): Branden Colvin, Ryan Hitchcock, and Daniel Prien, who are missing and feared dead in the collapsed Davenport building
Iowa Task Force 1, a Cedar Rapids-based urban search and rescue team trained and equipped by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, also arrived at the scene on Thursday.
The crew came equipped with ‘live and cadaver canines’, according to Davenport’s Government website, which are dogs trained to sniff out the scent of humans.
This comes after officials mistakenly said on Monday that there was no indication anyone was missing and scheduled demolition for the following day.
But on Monday night, hours before bulldozers were due to roll in, rescuers pulled a woman from a fourth-story window alive.
This sparked protests from Davenport locals calling for the demolition to be delayed.
The woman was the ninth and latest person to be pulled from the rubble, and 12 more survivors who could walk by themselves were also escorted safely out.
An additional challenge is posed to rescuers by a behemoth of brick and steel amassed at the base of the building, which is keeping the structure upright but could also contain the bodies of those killed, Mayor Mike Matson warned.
Matson compared the search through this debris to an archeological dig, which had to be conducted carefully and sensitively.
According to AP, documents released on Wednesday night exposed how city officials and the building’s owner, Davenport Hotel L.L.C., knew before the collapse that parts of the building were unstable.
Thesix-story residential building in Davenport, east Iowa, collapsed just before 5pm Sunday
On Thursday, city officials said they did not order an evacuation of the building because they relied on the engineer’s assurances that the building remained safe.
Matson said he had ‘regrets’ about the handling of the situation and promised to launch an investigation into what went wrong.
‘Do I have regrets about this tragedy and about people potentially losing their lives?Hell yeah,’ he said.
‘Do I think about this every moment? Hell yeah.
‘I have regrets about a lot of things. Believe me, we´re going to look at that.’
Andrew Wold, head of Davenport Hotel L.L.C released a statement dated Tuesday saying ‘our thoughts and prayers are with our tenants’, and he has been fined $300 for failing to maintain the structure.
He will also be required to pay for the demolition.
Neither Wold, his company or his attorney have responded to efforts to reach him since then.
County records show Davenport Hotel L.L.C.acquired the building in a 2021 deal worth $4.2 million.
Tenants had complained over several years about problems they say were ignored by the property managers, including losing heat and hot water for months at a time, mold and water leakages from ceilings and toilets.
Davenport officials ordered repairs after they found seven fire code violations on February 6, however they were told three weeks later by the building maintenance team that ‘none of the work was completed’, records show.
Rich Oswald, Davenport’s director of development and neighborhood services, confirmed Thursday that the city’s chief building official, Trishna Pradhan, resigned in the aftermath of the collapse.
People gathered outside the collapsed Davenport building on 324 Main Street
Fire Chief Mike Carlsten said that the emergency response could take ‘weeks’ due to the dangerous conditions surrounding the building.
Pradhan had visited the building on May 25, and erroneously reported it had ‘passed’ an inspection in notes in the city´s online permitting system, Oswald said.
She attempted to change the inspection result to the correct ‘incomplete’ status on Tuesday, but a technical glitch instead listed the outcome as ‘failed,’ he said.
The city later clarified that Pradhan resigned voluntarily and not in lieu of termination. She has not responded to requests for comment.
Assistant City Attorney Brian Heyer said he is unaware whether the city had considered earlier civil enforcement action to protect residents.
‘We are doing the best we can to balance the building conditions and the safety of our responders,’ he said.
The rescue mission did not begin until at least 24 hours after the collapse, because the structure was still in motion and thus unsafe for excavators, according to officials.
Speaking about the delay, Rick Halleran, the task force´s Cedar Rapids division chief, said: ‘We do what the building tells us to do.’
Halleran said the search for survivors, which involved sniffer dogs and cameras, was completed Thursday evening.
