The precarious balance between construction work in an increasingly crowded city and the frailty of the buildings already in place was dramatically exposed on Friday evening when a ten-storey building in the centre of Buenos Aires partially collapsed, destroying half of the apartments in the building and rendering the remainder uninhabitable. As the dust cleared yesterday, the speed at which events had unfolded became clear.
The Buenos Aires City Government revealed that it had been informed by a resident in the area that cracks had formed on a building at 1232 Bartolomé Mitre, in the San Nicolás neighbourhood. Emergency services rushed to the scene, and at about 7pm on Friday night, the imminent collapse of the building was announced. With the assistance of the Federal Fire Service and Civil Defence, the entire building was evacuated, in only fifteen minutes.
City Cabinet Chief Horacio Rodríguez Larreta said that tests were being carried out on what remained of the building, but recognized that the structure had been severely weakened and could eventually be demolished.
Half of the building, which was composed of two structures, collapsed on Friday night. The city government worked to discover the extent of the damage, transfer those who had been made homeless, and warn neighbouring buildings of potential repercussions.
Buenos Aires can often appear to be the victim of self-made perpetuating cycles. Many of the buildings in the city are old; furthermore, a great deal of these buildings are in need of repair, often structural.
The tragedy of Friday’s event is that it apparently could have been caused by nearby construction work that allegedly hit a ‘bubble’ in the earth during excavation; when the bubble burst, the building at 1232 started to collapse.
The architect involved in the construction work contacted the City government on Friday night, according to the head of the City Government Control Agency, Javier Ibáñez: “The architect contacted us stating that a ‘bubble’ in the ground had been discovered through the construction. When the excavation for the second part of the construction project began, the earth caved in and the cement in the next-door building gave way.”
However, Ibáñez stated that “there will have to be a technical investigation to determine whether this really occurred or if the incident was due to negligence.”
The City’s responsibility in these cases is potentially a political hot potato. Friday’s collapse was only the latest in a string of similar events that have occurred in the last fourteen months, each with a similar blame cycle: the fault lies with those directly involved, but shouldn’t the City government be paying better attention to the buildings that it authorizes?
The response to the latest incident was led by Rodríguez Larreta, who stated yesterday that if it was confirmed that the building’s collapse was due to the construction work, the company involved would be held “responsible” for material losses suffered by the affected families.
“One cannot send inspectors to each site: that would be like putting a policeman on each corner to avoid traffic accidents,” was Rodríguez Larreta’s response to questions about whether the City government was failing in its monitoring of construction work in Buenos Aires.
As ever, the real victims are the now homeless residents.The majority of the building’s residents were transferred yesterday to the houses of relatives and the rest were assisted by the City government’s Social Development Ministry.
“We’ll probably have to perform a partial demolition tomorrow (today),” said a City government representative, Néstor Nicolás, who also revealed that residents from the initial building “will not be able to access the site,” while stating that residents in neighbouring buildings would only be briefly allowed to remove personal possessions.
Further buildings could yet be demolished, but the only certainty from Friday‘s collapse is the inevitable blame game.
Source: Buenos Aires Herald