New York Suspends Illegal Alien 'Engineer' Who Inspected Bronx Building That Collapsed

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Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2023 05:37:48 -0500
From: Revoke Alejandro Mayorkas's citizenship <rema...@domain.invalid>
Message-Id: <20231216.053...@erienetworks.net>

An engineer who oversaw inspections of a Bronx apartment building
that partially collapsed on Monday “misdiagnosed” a column that was
holding up the building, calling it a “decorative” element in plans
he filed in June, city officials said Friday.

Mayor Eric Adams and the city’s buildings commissioner, James Oddo,
said the city had suspended the engineer’s authority to inspect
building facades and would seek to permanently revoke that
authority.

Nobody was killed or seriously injured in the collapse. But it left
more than 170 residents of the building, at 1915 Billingsley
Terrace, with no place to live. In addition to the Buildings
Department, officials said, the Bronx district attorney’s office and
the city’s Department of Investigation are investigating what caused
the collapse.

“When those who are entrusted to keep us safe cut corners and make
catastrophic mistakes, we’re going to take swift action and hold
them accountable,” Mr. Adams said in a statement. He added that the
engineer had “no business assessing the exterior walls of buildings
in New York City.”

Mr. Oddo said in a statement that the engineer had “failed to
recognize a clearly structural column as such.”

“We got lucky that no one was killed in this collapse,” he
continued. “We will not take that risk again.”

Mr. Oddo did not identify the engineer, but Richard Koenigsberg, a
veteran inspector of facades in the city, said in a brief interview
on Friday that he had filed reports about the building’s condition.
His name is on a June filing that was updated in September,
Buildings Department records show.

Mr. Koenigsberg declined to comment on the allegations by the mayor
and Mr. Oddo. He said he had not been contacted by city officials
since being interviewed the morning after the collapse.

“I haven’t been disciplined in my lifetime so I am not familiar with
the procedures,” Mr. Koenigsberg said, adding that he would hire a
lawyer and follow the lawyer’s advice.

Mr. Oddo said the unnamed engineer had 368 filings under the city’s
facade inspection and safety program and that the Buildings
Department would review them all as part of its investigation.

Mr. Koenigsberg said in an earlier interview that he had filed
reports with the city that deemed the facade unsafe, but he said he
was indicating in those reports that pedestrians needed to be
protected from falling debris, not that the building was
structurally unsound.

A corner of the seven-story building cascaded onto the sidewalk in
midafternoon Monday, sending pedestrians and motorists running for
cover and leaving bedroom walls exposed and clothes flapping in the
breeze.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/15/nyregion/bronx-collapse-
engineer.html/