DAVENPORT, Iowa — Eight people were rescued and no deaths have been reported after the partial collapse of a six-story apartment building in the eastern Iowa city of Davenport on Sunday, a city official said.
Rescuers with six search dogs worked through the night in the building after the 5 p.m. Sunday collapse, Davenport Mayor Mike Matson said at Monday a press conference.
An eighth person was located and extracted from the building overnight and taken to a hospital, Fire Chief Michael Carlsten said. There are no confirmed deaths, and no people are known to be trapped in the building, he said.
Carlsten declined to release the condition of the hospitalized person. He also did not say how many other people suffered injuries.
There were rescues “out of multiple floors and multiple locations” in the building, he said. The rescue operation is expected to be completed soon and then will transition to a “recovery operation,” he said, adding he expected emergency workers would remain at the scene through most of Monday.
Matson credited the apparent lack of deaths to the immediate response by Davenport Fire Department personnel, who went into the unstable building “with no concern about themselves,” he said.
Carlsten said there was “conflicting information” regarding whether everyone was accounted for.
Matson said emergency agencies from throughout the Iowa-Illinois Quad Cities area assisted, as well as Iowa state agencies.
Seven adults and one child remained in a shelter Monday morning, he said. The rest of the more than a dozen people brought out of the building were sheltering with relatives, friends or others, he said. He also cautioned people to avoid the area.
In a previous news conference Sunday night, Carlsten said collapses continued while rescuers were on the scene.
“I think our big thing is the stability of the building,” Carlsten said. “We’re not sure how stable the building is.”
The cause of the collapse was not immediately known. Rich Oswald, city of Davenport director of development and neighborhood services, said Sunday that work was being done on the building’s exterior at the time of the collapse.
Reports of bricks falling from the building early last week were part of that work and the building’s owner had a permit for the project, Oswald said.
Jennifer Smith, co-owner of Fourth Street Nutrition, a business on the ground floor of the building, said she learned of the collapse from her husband, who works for Mid-American Energy, the city’s utility provider.
“He was on call and got called in for a building explosion downtown. We had no idea it was our building,” she said. “It sounds bad, but we have been calling the city and giving complaints since December. Our bathroom caved in December.”
Smith said water damage has been apparent since they moved into their space in the winter. The company’s co-owner, Deonte Mack, said fire crews were in the building Thursday for an inspection.
“The tenants told us the building was going to collapse,” Smith said.
Tadd Machovec, a contractor from Davenport, said he was inside the building putting up a support beam when it came down.
The Quad-City Times reported Robert Robinson, who lived on the building’s second floor, walked outside for a smoke break and went back in as alarms went off.
“When we started to go back in the lights went out,” he told the newspaper. “All of a sudden everybody started running out saying the building collapsed. I’m glad we came down when we did.”
Robinson and his girlfriend were able to take the elevator down just in time, he said.
“This is horrible,” he said. “We don’t have anywhere to go. Nothing to eat.”
The building is owned by Andrew Wold, The Quad-City Times reported. A working phone number for Wold was not immediately available Sunday night and attempts to reach him for comment were unsuccessful.
According to the county assessor’s office, the last permit for the building was filed on March 2 and had “misc” listed in the description. In 2022, nearly 20 permits were filed, mainly for plumbing or electrical issues.
Davenport sits on the Mississippi River, on the border with Illinois. It is home to about 100,000 people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Contributing: The Associated Press.