Recent New Orleans building collapse reignites need for engineer

Just last week, part of a historic building on St. Louis Street came crashing down.

“No one wants to see buildings collapse. Buildings collapse for lots of different reasons,” said Director of the Office of Community and Economic Development Jeffrey Schwartz.

City of New Orleans Chief Building Official Jay Dufour says the building was already being monitored by the owners.

“Trying to get them into restoring, their brick, and then it got to the point where on doing that, while they were doing it, they had you know, quite a lot of bricks fall down on the sidewalk,” said Dafour.

Collapses often result in street closures, something Councilwoman Lesli Harris says causes all sorts of other problems.

“It’s always an interruption of our city service is and luckily, nobody was injured when it happened. But I do mourn, as you said, the loss of Maypop and some other businesses that had to shutter because of this,” Harris said.

In January the city council approved bringing in an engineer to help address building collapses. However, the job is still open six months later.

Councilman Oliver Thomas believes that if a survey of the building is done it’ll show how vibration plays a part in the collapses.

“Perpetual potholes, when you have infrastructure that is so unstable. Your car has to roll over it or around it, you are creating a certain amount of vibration that permeates through the infrastructure to the buildings,” Thomas said.

Determined to find a solution, Harris says another approach is necessary to see that an engineer is hired.

“We’re going to have to take another look at that and see how much if we need to increase the rfp. If we can publicize this more widely, via social media and other means rather than what we do currently,” Harris said.

We reached out to the city about the challenges of finding an engineer but have not heard back.

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