Who will help tenants recover goods left in blast-damaged Realty Tower?
This is the day tenants displaced from Youngstown’s blast-damaged Realty Tower are being allowed to get help retrieving some of their personal belongings. However, they may be wondering who’s going to help them.
City officials have been saying that firefighters will go into the structure that on May 28 was shattered by a natural gas explosion in the basement that was so powerful, that it blew off the elevator doors on the 12th floor of the Realty Building and killed Chase Bank employee Akil Drake.
On Tuesday, Firefighter’s Union President Jon Racco released a letter sent to Fire Chief Barry Finley saying the union has advised members not to “volunteer” for retrieval duty at the building because of the danger inside.
Realty Tower property management company Live Youngstown has said that the building has been stabilized in preparation for demolition, which could begin Thursday.
Noting that the union was not part of the discussion leading up to the recruitment of firefighters for the retrieval process, Racco claims in his letter that no attempt to stabilize the building has taken place.
“Realty Tower is likely more unstable now than it has ever been,” Racco said in his letter. “Crews of firefighters and equipment carrying out bags of luggage could be all it takes for a partial interior or even global collapse of the remaining structure.”
Racco claims that there are 1,000-pound pieces of concrete dangling in the building that could fall, killing someone.
In response to the letter, Chief Barry Finley tells 21 News he’ll help tenants by himself. “If they don't want to help the citizens of Youngstown, I will do it. I think tenants who can't get back in their houses deserve some of their belongings,” said Finley.
The dispute may leave tenants wondering if there is anyone with the expertise to recognize hazards inside the building along with the stamina and will to repeatedly go up as much as 12 floors as temperatures outside are forecast to reach the mid-80s.