Parking garage structure partially collapses at Bayshore mall in Glendale
A parking structure at Bayshore mall in Glendale partially collapsed Thursday afternoon, damaging two cars but leading to no apparent injuries.
"We're fairly confident there is no one in that space," North Shore Fire Department Chief Robert Whitaker told reporters, as authorities were able to view security video and spoke with owners of the two damaged vehicles.
Glendale Mayor Bryan Kennedy said: "I mean we certainly, certainly dodged a bullet on this one."
It was 12:15 p.m. when fire department personnel were dispatched to the garage on the corner of West Silver Spring Drive and North Port Washington Road, Whitaker said.
Unclear was whether heavy snow overnight contributed to the collapse but Whitaker said he expected that weather played some role.
Overhead shots of the garage showed that the snow on the parking garage's third floor had been compressed into one central area, the site of the collapse.
More:What we know about the partial parking garage collapse at Bayshore mall
The fire chief indicated that cars may be trapped in the garage for a month or more. A portion of the third floor collapsed "like a pancake" onto the ramp between floors.
"Literally from the third floor down, it is a wide open hole," he said. "The third floor is in the first floor right now."
Milwaukee Deputy Fire Chief Matthew Williamson said the piece of concrete that fell from the third floor is approximately 20 feet long and 50 feet wide. He said crews believed the rest of the structure was sound and not compromised by the partial collapse.
Kennedy said the parking structure would have been "built in 2005 and 2006," adding that the city's building inspector was recently on the site for a series of inspections related to the mall's expansion.
"So he walked over to see what was going on here," he said. "So we're regularly working with the folks at Bayshore."
Kennedy said he didn't get "a full assessment" from the inspector "other than he came and walked around and looked at the property and he felt confident enough that he could go back over to continue his inspection of the apartments."
Kennedy said he parked in the lot a day earlier to go to Trader Joe's.
Collapse stuns those in the mall
“It sounded like a bomb,” said Darius Fox, an employee of Rocky Rococo pizza, in an adjacent building. “It shook the whole building.”
Fox thought the sound was a bad car crash before he walked out with his coworkers to see the collapsed roof and pile of snow.
“It’s just a shock because nothing usually happens out here like that,” Fox said.
Angela Van Oss, an employee at nearby Mattress Firm, walked out of the store after hearing the noise and feeling her building shake. Two young women were on the scene. They told Van Oss they were about to drive into the garage when it collapsed in front of them.
They were elated that they didn’t drive in and joked about going to buy lottery tickets, Van Oss said.
Cassandra Ploeger’s Hyundai Santa Fe was one of the two cars caught in the collapse.
She works at Pet Apothecary across the street, far enough away that employees didn’t hear the collapse.
When a police officer called Ploeger, she worried she had a parking ticket. The officer said her car been damaged and Ploeger figured there was a dent or scratch.
“But no, she got smashed,” she said.
Ploeger is “pretty attached” to her car. She named it Darla after the little girl in the “Finding Nemo” movie and spent a fair amount of money keeping it up since she bought it four or five years ago.
She parked Darla in the garage Thursday, thinking it would save her from brushing snow off the windows at the end of her shift.
Nick Recht planned to park Thursday morning on the third floor of the garage, near the area that later collapsed. But his car got stuck in a pile of snow on the ramp.
His friend Geordin Panagopoulos helped push his car out of the pile, and he parked on the second floor in an area that was not affected by the collapse.
They both work for a software company in a nearby building and heard a series of consecutive booms when the top floor crashed into the garage.
"It sounded like, boom boom boom boom," Recht said.
They said the garage collapse came in the area where crews piled up the snow.
Recent snowfall was especially dense
The wintery mix of snow, sleet and ice that fell across Milwaukee County on Wednesday was extremely dense.
The county saw a "total liquid equivalent" between 0.9 and 1.2 inches from the storm, said Denny VanCleve, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sullivan.
One liquid equivalent inch typically equates to 10 inches of snow — or two to three inches of sleet, he said.
So even though the amount of snow and sleet covering the ground Thursday morning looked small, it packed a weighty punch.
"It can be deceiving," VanCleve said. "It doesn't seem like much but the piles are going to weigh much more than two inches of snow would."
As more than two dozen firefighters worked at the scene, Joan Rocamora, a resident of an apartment complex at Bayshore, said, “I’m so glad to have all these people ready to help us. I think we’re going to be OK."
Reporters Alex Groth and Elliot Hughes contributed to this story.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Bayshore mall parking structure partially collapses
