As many as five people may be missing after Davenport building collapse, officials say

Davenport leaders on Tuesday said as many as five people may be missing after the partial collapse of a downtown apartment building late Sunday afternoon, and that two of them may be in the rubble.

Monday morning, they had said they were wrapping up rescue operations and preparing to demolish the building, having found no evidence of anyone still missing or dead.

More: Davenport officials say 5 residents of collapsed building are unaccounted for: What we know

But after the discovery of a resident still in the building late Monday afternoon, nearly 24 hours after the collapse, they said they were consulting with experts about the possibility of further rescue operations.

The change of plan, announced in a news conference Tuesday, also came after hundreds of people protested outside the building, insisting that there were still people to be found.

One frustrated man pushed through a police barricade Tuesday, saying he wanted to conduct his own search. Police escorted him back out of the cordoned-off zone.

The six-story building at 324 Main St. was evacuated after part of its west façade collapsed about 5 p.m. Sunday, dropping tons of debris and tearing open rows of apartments. Emergency responders entered the building to help residents escape and removed one injured victim from the rubble early Monday.

Fire Chief Michael Carlsten said later Monday that “no known individuals are trapped." Speaking Tuesday, city Fire Marshal James Morris said rescuers believed they had conducted a thorough search.

“We had no indications from any of the responders that we had, any of the K9s, any of the tools at the time” that there was anyone else left alive in the building, Morris said.

But on Tuesday, officials said there were strong indications that at least two residents — Branden Colvin and Ryan Hitchcock — may still be in the building or under the rubble.

“This could be a place of rest for some of the unaccounted," said Mayor Mike Matson.

With engineers warning the remainder of the structure is in precarious condition, further searches are dangerous, but Morris said the city was looking for options to do so anyway.

"It is our goal to be able to conduct a search for additional occupants and any pets that still remain inside," he said. "We are currently working with technical rescue teams to determine the best options to provide an additional search."

What's the history of The Davenport, the building that partially collapsed?

According to county records, the building known as The Davenport was built in 1906. Previously the Davenport Hotel, it was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

With the building's renovation into housing, county assessor records show there were 79 apartment units as well as ground-floor commercial spaces.

The property has changed hands several times in the past decade, according to county records, most recently in 2019, when an entity called Davenport Hotel LLC bought it for just under $4.2 million. That entity is registered to a Bettendorf resident, Andrew Wold, according to state records.

City officials confirmed Tuesday they've been in contact with Wold, but said it's too early to determine a cause for the collapse or whether any wrongdoing was involved. Wold could not be reached for comment.

Work was being done on the building’s exterior at the time of the collapse, said Rich Oswald, the city’s director of development and neighborhood services. Reports of falling bricks were part of that work, and a permit had been issued for the project, Oswald said.

The exterior repair work involved the same section of the building that would soon crumble, according to residents. Donalda McDuffy, whose daughter lived there and escaped Sunday, shared a photo with the Register of falling exterior brickwork a week before the collapse.

Structural engineer Larry Sandhaas said at Tuesday's news conference that one factor in how the collapse unfolded, and the subsequent shakiness of the rest of the building, appeared to be the building technique used in its original construction. The steel framework inside the building depended in part on the exterior brick walls for support.

"That's not how you build a modern building," he said. "You had five stories collapse into one almost immediately. ... That reduces the chance you'll have what are called void spaces, large spaces where people can survive."

Frustration, anger boil over after rescue work initially called off

Protesters gathered outside the building Monday afternoon and again Tuesday morning, saying the city wasn't doing enough to identify and find those still possibly trapped inside before undertaking demolition.

By 10 a.m. Monday, about 17 hours after the collapse, city officials had announced the shift from rescue operations to recovery. Due to the "unstable condition" of the remainder of the building, city leaders said "demolition is expected to commence in the morning (Tuesday)."

Outside the building, residents and family members told reporters several people living in the building had not yet been located. On Monday evening, they were proven right when one of those residents, Lisa Brooks, was spotted waving from a partially wrecked fourth-floor apartment. Rescue workers used a fire truck's bucket hoist to retrieve her from the building.

Brooks' daughter-in-law, Mildred Harrington, who lived with her in the apartment but was out when the collapse occurred, said the terrified Brooks had hidden in her bathroom overnight.

After Brooks' rescue, crowds gathered outside with signs demanding officials "Find them first" and "Who is in the rubble?"

Matson said Tuesday he doesn't know why Brooks wasn't found and rescued in the initial search of the building, but that the city "is committed to finding out why."

In response to the brewing tension, Tuesday's city news conference included a call by Amy Anderson, a cousin of the missing Hitchcock, for calm and for people to let the city carry out the demolition.

"I was completely just kind of mortified about the protests and the people raising a voice" Monday night, Anderson said. "They don't know Ryan. They don't know our family. The city does have a plan, and pushing any delays is one more day that he's under there."

Outside, another of Hitchcock's cousins, Chris Creekmore, said she disagreed with Anderson's statements.

"We want to know if he’s in that rubble, or in that building," she said. "We want it searched."

Attendees interrupted Tuesday's news conference several time to demand faster action, and Morris, the fire marshal, responded that the city was doing the best it could in an extremely dangerous situation.

"You can't run up to a pile of bricks and rocks and just start throwing things off, as much as we want to," he said, pausing to wipe his eyes. "We want to get everybody out, and we want to do it right now."

Demolition plans 'fluid and flexible,' fire marshal says

At Tuesday's news conference, officials seemed to suggest the previous day's statement that demolition would commence had overstated the speed with which the building could be taken down.

"At least from my perspective, the plan (was) to set up to get in position to demolish today, to set the stage," said Matson, the mayor, adding that he didn't think officials had ever planned to start the actual demolition Tuesday.

It's not clear now when the demolition will begin. Morris said the timeline is "fluid and flexible," and that the demolition, when it begins, will not involve explosives and will more closely resemble a process of "disassembling" the building.

It's also not clear how long the city can afford to wait. First responders who entered the building Sunday could feel the building shifting under them, Morris said, and it has continued to deteriorate in the two days since. Engineers believe the pile of debris from Sunday's partial collapse is now one of the only things keeping the rest of the building standing.

"We could walk out of this room right now, and that building might have only 20 minutes left," Morris said.

Despite that danger, rescue workers still weren't done with the property. On Tuesday afternoon after the news conference, reporters observed emergency workers leaving the building with pet carriers containing rescued animals.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

William Morris covers courts for the Des Moines Register. He can be contacted at wrmorris2@registermedia.com, 715-573-8166 or on Twitter at @DMRMorris.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: 5 people could be missing in Davenport building collapse, city says