Chicago, Deadly porch collapse kills 12
Mark Fenster
This could be an off topic post, but there is probably SOME crime
committed by the person (or people) responsible for the party
(possibly exceeding the fire marshal’s maximum number of people
allowed on the porch).
Picture of what's left of the porch at:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-030629porch,1,7344207.story?coll=chi-news-hed
Fenster
***********************************************
Deadly porch collapse
By Glenn Jeffers and Rudolph Bush
Tribune staff reporters
Published June 29, 2003, 8:41 AM CDT
Twelve people were killed and dozens were hurt overnight when a
third-floor porch collapsed during a party on Chicago's North Side.
Dozens were attending a party at the duplex building at 713 W.
Wrightwood Ave., when the wooden porch collapsed shortly after
midnight, pancaking onto the second-floor and first-floor porches
before smashing into a basement stairwell, said Chicago Fire
Commissioner James Joyce.
"There was chaos," Joyce said of the scene that greeted the first
emergency workers to arrive. "There were people screaming and crying
in the alley."
Joyce said it appears the accident was due to overcrowding on the top
porch.
According to several witnesses who were in attendance, several
apartments in the six-unit building were involved in the party, and
groups of people were gathered on the second-floor and first-floor
porches when the porch collapsed.
None of the dead or injured victims has been identified by
authorities. The city has a hotline phone number, 312-743-4636, that
families can call to seek information about loved ones they believe
may have been involved in the accident.
Of those injured, who were transported to at least six area hospitals,
10 were in critical condition, 20 were in stable condition and four
others received minor injuries, Joyce said.
Fina Cannon, a young woman who was at the party, said a large number
of people had been on the third-floor porch, and others were on the
second-floor porch. She said all the guests were in their early 20s,
and many had graduated several years ago from New Trier High School in
the northern suburbs.
Cannon told CLTV that she had entered the building from the rear porch
area, but avoided the decks after getting to the party. She said she
was in the back kitchen, looking out at the porch when it collapsed.
"All of a sudden I saw all these heads going down," Cannon said. "The
floor just dropped out from underneath them. They all went down in
unison."
"People were bloodied all over," said James Johnson, a bouncer for the
Burwood Tap on Wrightwood, who ran to the building to help the
injured. "There were a lot of people in pain."
The fire department was alerted to the accident at 12:31 a.m., Joyce
said, and within the next several minutes, more than 75 firefighters
and parmedics descended on the scene. Dozens of people were trapped
within the rubble of bricks, wood and dirt, he said.
One witness, who did not want to be named, said he was inside one of
the apartments during the party and that chaos broke out when the
porch collapsed.
"We were just trying to extract people from the wreckage," he said.
Johnson said the area around Wrightwood and Halsted Avenue is known
for being very social and word often spreads fast about a local party.
"The numbers got to be too much to handle," Johnson said.
CLTV and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
Wild Monkshood
Mark Fenster wrote:
> Gentlepeople,
>
> This could be an off topic post, but there is probably SOME crime
> committed by the person (or people) responsible for the party
> (possibly exceeding the fire marshal’s maximum number of people
> allowed on the porch).
Was it a private residence? I doubt there was an official allotment. If the
construction was shabby, that is one thing. I bet the owner and/or contractor are going
to get grief, even if there was no way they could anticipate that many people being on
the balcony.
Wild Monkshood
<snippers>
--
Do Buzzards have Carrion Luggage when they Fly?
Jaforslev
>to get grief, even if there was no way they could anticipate that many people
>being on
>the balcony.
Most of the kids graduated from New Trier High School. That means that most of
the kids' parents are ridiculously wealthy. I'm sure we'll see plenty of
lawsuits on this one.
Julie
Sarah Monroe
>Most of the kids graduated from New Trier High School. That means that most
>of
>the kids' parents are ridiculously wealthy. I'm sure we'll see plenty of
>lawsuits on this one.
>Julie
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
The pictures shown on TV certainly don't look like the apartment of wealthy
people.
Looks about a step above a ghetto. Too many people on the balcony, even
elevators have load limits.
Gms
CHRISTIAN, n.
One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably
suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor....from The Devil's Dictionary
stargazer
"Mark Fenster" <Fenster_2...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:b5e42449.03062...@posting.google.com...
> Gentlepeople,
>
> This could be an off topic post, but there is probably SOME crime
> committed by the person (or people) responsible for the party
> (possibly exceeding the fire marshal’s maximum number of people
> allowed on the porch).
>
> Picture of what's left of the porch at:
I don't know about the responsibility being with the apartment dweller,
could be it lays with the owners. We had a similar situation here, a deck
collapse, not as many deaths, but then there wasn't the sandwich effect here
as there were no other 'decks' beneath the collapsed one. But upon further
examination it was found that many of the decks in this particular complex
had serious code violations, in other words 'they were slapped up cheaply'
without proper support.
sg
>
>
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-030629porch,1,7344207.story?coll=chi-
Mark Fenster
> Mark Fenster wrote:
>
> > Gentlepeople,
> >
> > This could be an off topic post, but there is probably SOME crime
> > committed by the person (or people) responsible for the party
> > allowed on the porch).
>
> Was it a private residence? I doubt there was an official allotment. If the
> construction was shabby, that is one thing. I bet the owner and/or contractor are going
> to get grief, even if there was no way they could anticipate that many people being on
> the balcony.
>
> Wild Monkshood
> <snippers>
Wild Monkshood,
Below, an update from the Chicago Tribune...the incident took place in
a six-unit apartment building...several apartments were involved in
the party at the same time...yes, these apartments were private
residences.
Fenster
********************************************
Chicago Tribune update:
Joyce said it appears the accident was due to overcrowding on the top
porch.
Larry Langford, spokesman for the city's Office of Emergency
Management and Communications, said most of the dead appeared to have
been people who were sandwiched between the falling porch floors.
"Someone on the third-floor porch when it fell could have
theoretically ridden it down and stepped off uninjured," Langford
said.
According to several witnesses who were in attendance, several
apartments in the six-unit building were involved in the party, and
groups of people were gathered on the second-floor and first-floor
porches when the porch collapsed.
The fatalities were six women and six men, according to the Cook
County medical examiner's office. Victims include: John Jackson, 22,
Kansas City; Katherine Sheriff, 23, Chicago; Eileen Lupton, 22, Lake
Forest; Henry Wischerath, 24, Buffalo, N.Y.; Shea Fitzgerald, 19,
Winnetka; Margaret Haynie, 25, Evansville, Ind.; Sam Farmer, 21,
Winnetka; and Muhammed Hameeduddin, 25, Chicago.
``The porches back there could probably facilitate 20 to 30 people,''
not the 40 to 50 police said may have been there Sunday, said one
neighbor, Dr. David Guelich, an orthopedic surgeon.
Mark Fenster
I saw an AP report that claimed the porches were one year old, but I
have not seen any confirmation of that fact anywhere else. If (and it
may be a big if at this point) the porches were one year old, there
would have been a building permit for their construction on file with
the City of Chicago. In any event, I suspect we will find out the age
of the porches in the next couple of days.
I suppose I should add that even a new porch, properly constructed,
could buckle under too much weight.
I agree with you that the owner and possibly the contractor will get
grief on this incident.
Fenster
Jaforslev
>people.
>Looks about a step above a ghetto.
It's probably an older building, but it is in the Wrigleyville section of the
northwest side of Chicago--a very expensive area filled with yuppies on the
rise. And about 95% of the students who go to New Trier come from very wealthy
homes.
Julie
Mark Fenster
> "Mark Fenster" <Fenster_2...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:b5e42449.03062...@posting.google.com...
> > Gentlepeople,
> >
> > This could be an off topic post, but there is probably SOME crime
> > committed by the person (or people) responsible for the party
> > (possibly exceeding the fire marshal’s maximum number of people
> > allowed on the porch).
> >
> > Picture of what's left of the porch at:
>
>
> I don't know about the responsibility being with the apartment dweller,
> could be it lays with the owners. We had a similar situation here, a deck
> collapse, not as many deaths, but then there wasn't the sandwich effect here
> as there were no other 'decks' beneath the collapsed one. But upon further
> examination it was found that many of the decks in this particular complex
> had serious code violations, in other words 'they were slapped up cheaply'
> without proper support.
>
> sg
> >
At this time, there does not seem to be any reliable information on
the age of the porch...additionallly, (at least so far) there is there
is "no evidence of any criminal activity whatsoever"
Fenster
Porch collapses during party, 12 killed
By BRANDON LOOMIS
Associated Press Writer
Published June 29, 2003, 7:49 PM CDT
Natalie Brougham was standing on a crowded third-floor porch with
friends when the floor dropped out from under her early Sunday,
killing 12 people and injuring dozens more.
"There were people covering me. It was pitch black and people were
yelling, 'I'm dying.' I was assuming I was going to die," said the
22-year-old Chicago resident who lives near the accident site and had
injuries to her hip and shoulder. "I guess I got lucky and only had
two or three people on top of me."
Dozens of people stood on the overloaded third-floor porch of an
apartment building in the city's Lincoln Park neighborhood when it
collapsed during a party about 12:30 a.m., sending people and debris
to the ground. As many as 57 people were injured, authorities said.
"There was no warning," said Simon Rasin, a University of Chicago law
student who attended the party, whose friend Henry Wischerath was one
of those killed. "I fell through both the second and the first floor
decks into the basement area in just a pile of bodies."
Authorities said the collapse of the two floors left some people
trapped in a basement stairwell.
"There was chaos," Chicago Fire Commissioner James Joyce said of the
scene that greeted the first emergency workers to arrive. "There were
people screaming and crying in the alley."
City Building Commissioner Norma Reyes said the city had talked with
the building's owner, who was in Canada. She said the city had "no
indication of any structural problems or insufficiencies with the
porch," and she did not know how old the porch was.
"Thus far, there is no evidence of any criminal activity whatsoever,"
Police Superintendent Terry Hillard said.
Partygoers inside who escaped after the collapse said they tried to
rescue their friends trapped under a pile of lumber, while people
poured out of their homes in the Lincoln Park neighborhood and a
nearby tavern to help.
"They were bloodied and covered in rubble, their clothes were ripped.
Women were looking for husbands, men were looking for wives. It was
horrible," said Geraldine Schapira, 33, who lives nearby.
As curious neighbors watched workers clear the area Sunday afternoon,
at least red plastic cups was still on the railing of the railing of
the third floor porch that remained standing, serving as an eerie
reminder of just how fast the floor fell. Later in the afternoon,
workers tore the porch down.
Larry Langford, spokesman for the city's Office of Emergency
Management and Communications, said most of the seven men and five
women who died appeared to have been people who were sandwiched
between the falling porch floors.
"Someone on the third-floor porch when it fell could have
theoretically ridden it down and stepped off uninjured," Langford
said.
Joyce said 11 people were pronounced dead at the scene.
The Cook County Medical Examiner's office later confirmed that a 12th
person was dead on arrival at Advocate Illinois Medical Center.
The office identified the victims as: John Jackson, 22, of Kansas
City, Mo.; Katherine Sheriff, 23, of Chicago; Eileen Lupton, 22, of
Lake Forest; Henry Wischerath, 24, of Buffalo, N.Y.; Shea Fitzgerald,
19, of Winnetka; Muhammed Hameeduddin, 25, of Chicago; Margaret
Haynie, 25, of Evansville, Ind.; Sam Farmer, 21, of Winnetka; Eric
Kumpf, 30, of Hoboken, N.J.; Robert Koranda, 23, of Naperville; Kelly
McKinnell, 26, of Barrington; and Julie Sorkin, 25, of Glenview.
Cortez Trotter, Chicago's Emergency Management director, said during a
news conference that injuries ranged from critical to minor.
The largest number of injured were taken to Illinois Masonic, which is
the closest hospital to the scene. Authorities said 21 victims, in
addition to the fatality, were taken there.
Physicians said one victim brought to Illinois Masonic was without a
pulse on arrival, but was resuscitated. She remained in critical
condition Sunday afternoon. Family members identified the woman, whose
name was not known when she came to the hospital, after hearing
reports of the accident.
Five other victims at Illinois Masonic were listed in serious
condition, officials said. Sixteen people were released after being
treated at the hospital, officials said.
The other injured were taken to eight other hospitals: Louis A. Weiss
Memorial, Northwestern Memorial, Swedish Covenant, Grant, St. Joseph,
St. Francis, St. Mary and St. Elizabeth.
The collapse occurred at 713 W. Wrightwood Ave., in Lincoln Park.
Fina Cannon, a young woman who was at the party, said a large number
of people had been on the third-floor porch, and others were on the
second-floor porch at the same time. She said all the guests were in
their early 20s, and many had graduated several years ago from New
Trier High School in Chicago's northern suburbs.
Cannon told CLTV that she was in the apartment's rear kitchen, looking
out at the porch when the collapse occurred.
"All of a sudden I saw all these heads going down," Cannon said. "The
floor just dropped out from underneath them. They all went down in
unison."
"It was simply a case of too many people in a small space," Joyce
said.
Chicago Police said as many as 40 or 50 people may have been on the
porch at the time of the collapse, and that there may have been beer
kegs and dancing on the porch as well.
Partygoers and emergency workers said all three of the porch floors
appeared to have been of new construction.
"It was pressure-treated wood and still had that greenish tint it has
when it's new," Langford said. "If I had to judge, I'd say it was
probably less than a year old."
Langford and the neighborhood's alderman, Vi Daley, said the Chicago
Building Department was investigating to see if a building permit had
been issued for any new porch work.
Karen Gesiakowski of the city's Office of Emergency Management and
Communications said the city had set up a hot line for family and
friends of people who may have been at the party at the time of the
collapse. She said those seeking information about their loved ones
should call (312)-743-INFO (4636).
Mark Fenster
> news:b5e42449.03062...@posting.google.com...
> > Gentlepeople,
> >
> > This could be an off topic post, but there is probably SOME crime
> > committed by the person (or people) responsible for the party
> > (possibly exceeding the fire marshal’s maximum number of people
> > allowed on the porch).
> >
> > Picture of what's left of the porch at:
>
>
> I don't know about the responsibility being with the apartment dweller,
> could be it lays with the owners. We had a similar situation here, a deck
> collapse, not as many deaths, but then there wasn't the sandwich effect here
> as there were no other 'decks' beneath the collapsed one. But upon further
> examination it was found that many of the decks in this particular complex
> had serious code violations, in other words 'they were slapped up cheaply'
> without proper support.
>
> sg
> >
The Chicago Tribune has 19 pictures in a photo gallery on this
incident.
From the link below, look on the right hand side for Photo Gallery...
under the first picture, the link DEADLY PORCH COLLAPSE will access
the Tribune's 19 pictures...
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-030629porch,1,1205937.story?coll=chi-news-hed
Fenster
stargazer
I caught a picture of this on the news earlier, walked in at the end of the
story, but the wood looked fairly new compared to the building, didn't it?
Just going by how that treated lumber ages where we live anyway. The deck
that collapsed here, wasn't properly attached to the dwelling and IIRC,
didn't have the required footings.
The house next door to us went up for sale some years ago, widow lady, her
nephew was a realtor. He brought in a truck load of 'day labors' he picked
up downtown, and they slapped up a big deck in one days time. In fact they
didn't even pour any footings, cause I watched 'em. They used some of those
patio blocks under the 4 by 4's. Yeah, it looked all nice and new to sell
the house, but what a pile of crap it was.
sg
stargazer
Damn, you have to be a member to get in there, and the way my computer is
limping along right now, I don't want to go through any more reading than I
have to. :(
sg
Mark Fenster
> Damn, you have to be a member to get in there, and the way my computer is
> limping along right now, I don't want to go through any more reading than I
> have to. :(
>
> sg
The owner of the building got building permits for some rehab work
done five years ago. There is no evidence that the owner got a
building permit to build a porch.
Repeating the last three paragraphs from the article...
"It's clear that they had permits. What's not clear is if they
exceeded the scope of their permits for the porch system," Reyes said.
City officials had contacted the owner and the architect to find
permit.
"If they cannot prove they had a permit, then there will be an issue,"
Reyes said.
Fenster
********************************************************
`It felt like an avalanche'
Porch collapse leaves 12 dead, 57 injured
By Joshua S. Howes and Brett McNeil, Tribune staff reporters. Tribune
staff reporters David Heinzmann, Gary Washburn, John Biemer, Robert
Becker and Sabrina L. Miller contributed to this report
Published June 30, 2003
One moment, they were sipping beer and cocktails on a Lincoln Park
porch on a summer night--dozens of people in their 20s shining with
promise. The next moment, the floor was falling away, plunging them
toward the ground in a rush of bodies and splintered lumber.
"It felt like an avalanche," said Tommy O'Connell, 23, one of the
people at the party.
As the three-story porch pancaked early Sunday, it crushed people on
the lower levels and tossed others into a heap. Twelve people were
killed--10 of them asphyxiated beneath the mass of wood and
people--and another 57 were injured in the porch collapse at a party
attended largely by former New Trier High School students and
University of Chicago Law School students.
City building officials spent Sunday picking through rubble to find a
cause for the collapse and digging through city records to assess the
owner's compliance with building codes.
Although the building's owners obtained permits for substantial rehab
work five years ago, officials were unable to find permits for the
porch itself. Obtaining permits triggers inspections of a structure's
plans and construction.
"We find no record of this permit at this time," said Norma Reyes, the
city's building commissioner.
The party was hosted, in part, to welcome new tenants to the
three-story building at 713 W. Wrightwood Ave., some guests said.
One of the party's hosts, Ben Bradford, was a 1996 New Trier graduate
and a U. of C. law student. Bradford survived, but his fiance, Julie
Sorkin, 25, of Glenview, did not.
Claire Sufrin, another 1996 New Trier graduate, said many people at
the party had known each other all their lives.
"It was definitely a New Trier crowd. It was a large, tight group of
guys and girls--friends since they were kids in grammar school," she
said.
She and others said the party never became rowdy.
"It was really calm, people were drinking but nobody was really
drunk," Sufrin said. "There were only a handful of people smoking
cigarettes. It was shocking how grown-up a party it was."
Sufrin, who left the party shortly before the porch fell, said the
porch seemed strong.
"It felt sturdy, it felt like the porch had a sense of permanency,"
she said.
Party guests said the upper two levels of the porch were very crowded,
with 35 to 40 people on each floor.
A former tenant of the second-floor apartment, Eric Clarke, had just
arrived at the party and was inside when the porch collapsed. He said
that in the two years he lived in the building, he had seen crowds of
similar size on the porches.
"I wouldn't say I was alarmed," he said. "It had had capacities like
that before."
But Clarke said many people were leaving the party because the beer
had run out, and so in addition to the large crowds on the porch
levels, the stairs were loaded with people leaving.
Natalie Brougham was on the top level of the porch when it failed.
"It just collapsed, that's all," she said as she left the Belmont Area
police headquarters after being interviewed. She walked with a limp
and had cuts and bruises.
"There were no warning signs at all."
She found herself with "people on top of me," surrounded by boards and
nails. Eventually, people pulled her out.
Witnesses described a horrific scene, with bloody survivors clambering
from the wreckage and then trying to free friends trapped beneath the
splintered timbers.
Horrified neighbors on nearby decks witnessed the collapse.
Elizabeth Guidici, 26, was with her roommates on a rooftop deck next
door when they saw a board fall just before the collapse.
"Within minutes, from the top it kind of buckled down through the
middle," Guidici said.
"I could see arms up in the air, and I could just hear screaming. We
came out and it was just chaos."
As the porch went down, some people managed to scramble to the
neighboring roof, she said. One man held onto a crossbeam, dangling
two stories in the air, until firefighters rescued him, Guidici and
firefighters said.
Those who jumped onto Guidici's roof ran down the stairs to start
pulling away the debris, trying to save friends.
"They started digging people out, and it was just a nightmare scene. I
saw people pulling people out, motionless," she said. "You saw people
on their cell phones and you realize they were probably looking for
their friends."
Many neighbors who were home in bed heard the thunderous crash of the
porch and rushed outside to help.
Rick Frommeyer had just finished walking his dog, when he heard the
crash and ran out to join dozens of people already helping.
After seeing many people on the ground with leg and ankle injuries, he
ran to a corner bar and asked for linens and ice to make ice packs.
"Some people were staggering around. People were crying. Some were in
different stages of shock," said Frommeyer, 37. "Others had friends
who found them and were being comforted by them. Others didn't know
where they were."
The Cook County medical examiner's office determined that 10 of the
victims died from "compressional asphyxia," meaning their chests were
crushed by heavy weight.
One victim, Katherine Sheriff, 23, of Pennsylvania died of multiple
injuries, according to the medical examiner. Eric Kumpf, 30, of
Hoboken, N.J., died of a broken neck.
Many of the dead came from the north suburbs, including Eileen Lupton,
22, of Lake Forest; Shea Fitzgerald, 19, of Winnetka; and Sam Farmer,
21, of Winnetka.
Others came from elsewhere in the area, including Kelly McKinnell, 26,
of Barrington; Robert Koranda, 23, of Chicago; and Muhammed
Hameeduddin, 24, of Chicago.
Others came from out of state, including John Jackson, 22, of Kansas
City, Mo.; Henry Wischerath, 24, of Buffalo, N.Y.; and Margaret
Haynie, 25, of Evansville, Ind.
City officials were investigating whether the porch, a 12-foot-wide,
three-story-high wooden structure built on the back of the building,
was built properly and with permits.
The building's owner, Phillip Pappas, who owns several rental
buildings in the city, was in Canada and not immediately reachable,
city officials said.
Reyes said a preliminary inspection found that the porch was
structurally sound.
Nevertheless, porches are not designed to support large crowds, no
matter how well they are built.
"It may have been well-built," said one city official who spoke on
condition of anonymity.
"But the problem is it invited a lot of people. It appeared to be 12
feet wide, with an extension beyond 12 feet for a barbecue area."
Reyes stressed that such porches are built for access to buildings and
not to accommodate large groups of people in the way a typical
backyard deck would.
Every year the city Building Department makes a public service
announcement reminding people not to put grills on the decks and not
to crowd porches with people. The city does not have the resources to
do annual inspections on the porches, officials said.
Chicago police were investigating the collapse and had interviewed
nearly 50 people who were at the party, trying to put together a
step-by-step account of what happened. Many of the interviews were
conducted at hospitals, police spokesman David Bayless said.
Because the building had a commercial use, with a dry cleaning
business on the ground level, it was subject to annual inspections,
Reyes said. The last inspection was completed in November, with two
minor violations unrelated to the porch, she said.
Reyes said she believed the porch was built in 1998, when a major
renovation of the building was completed. After searching through
records Sunday, city officials found no evidence that the porch was
built with the proper permit, Reyes said.
The owner took out permits for installation of new heating and
air-conditioning systems and for condensing the units from five
apartments to three, Reyes said.
"It's clear that they had permits. What's not clear is if they
exceeded the scope of their permits for the porch system," Reyes said.
City officials had contacted the owner and the architect to find
permit.
"If they cannot prove they had a permit, then there will be an issue,"
Reyes said.
- - -
Porch party mishaps
Since 1995, there have been at least six other porch collapses during
parties in the Chicago area and nearby suburbs.
PORCH INCIDENTS
May 1995: Eight people are injured when a third-floor porch on a
Lincoln Park building collapses and falls one story.
Aug. 1995: eight partygoers are injured in Mt. Prospect when the wood
supports of a back porch of an apartment collapses.
Sept. 1996: A North Side porch collapses, inuring 15.
Aug. 1997: A second-floor rear porch collapses during a party in
Wicker Park, injuring 18 people.
June 1998: then partygoers are injured when a third-floor porch
collpawses during a Bulls party in Wrigleyville.
Sept. 1999: A porch at a teacher's home in unincorporated Fox river
Grove collapses with 27 high school students on it.
Source: Tribune archives.
Mark Fenster
>
>
> Damn, you have to be a member to get in there, and the way my computer is
> limping along right now, I don't want to go through any more reading than I
> have to. :(
>
> sg
It was an unusual collection of photograhs...pictures of the dead
(probably received from family members), pictures of victims when
treated or waiting to be treated, and pictures of the porch.
Below, statements and tributes to those who died in the Chicago porch
collapse in June 2003.
Most `were just starting their lives'
By Rex W. Huppke, Tribune staff reporter.
Tribune staff reporters Colleen Mastony, John Keilman, Virginia
Groark, H. Gregory Meyer, Jon Yates, Joshua S. Howes and Manya A.
Brachear contributed to this
Published June 30, 2003
They were all on the cusp of something--one just months from a career
in nursing, another a final paper away from ending law school's
rigorous first year. One was a social worker who'd just bought a house
with her fiance, another a football player who'd overcome dyslexia and
was eyeing a career in the pros.
The 12 people who died Sunday morning when a porch collapsed during a
party in Lincoln Park were riding out the days when youthful
meandering gives way to real life, to starting careers, building
families and making an impact on the world.
"Everyone was doing something exciting," said Claire Sufrin, who was
at the party but left before the night turned tragic. "These people
were just starting their lives and doing really neat things."
In a terrifying moment amid the sound of screams and the snap of
splintering wood, Margaret Haynie's life came to an end, less than a
week past her 25th birthday. Her career in commercial lending at Bank
One was just beginning, she'd moved in with her college boyfriend only
a year ago and had plans to return home to Evansville, Ind., on the
4th of July.
"She was a fabulous student. She had a really great career going,"
said her father, Ken Haynie Jr. "It's just a tragic waste of unlimited
potential for just quite a young lady."
Eileen Lupton, 22, died before having a chance to reach her potential
as a recent graduate from Villanova University's nursing program.
Lupton had moved back into her family's home in Lake Forest to prepare
for her board exams.
She planned to move to downtown Chicago with two childhood friends and
start a job as a pediatric nurse at Children's Memorial Hospital in
Lincoln Park.
It was a job she had been well-suited for since high school, said
longtime friend Katie Purpura. Instilling confidence was what Lupton
did best.
"She was like a vault," Purpura said. "She would always keep your
secrets. And she was always giving advice for everything--boys, jobs,
school."
Accomplished law student
Sunday's tragedy means that Henry Wischerath Sr., a 55-year-old
accountant in Buffalo, N.Y., will never again get a phone call from
his son, a 24-year-old University of Chicago law school student who
talked to his dad every day.
Henry Wischerath Jr. graduated summa cum laude from Boston University
and was pursuing a law degree with the hope of someday becoming a
teacher. He spoke with his dad Saturday night, said he'd spent all day
in the library working on his final paper of the year and planned to
return to Buffalo on Wednesday. He didn't mention that he was going to
a party that night.
Sam Farmer, 21, on the other hand, had told his family in Winnetka
where he was going, and he opted to take the train into the city
rather than drive.
"The idea was to go to a party and be safe," said Marion Gladstein, a
friend of the family.
Farmer had just completed his sophomore year at the University of
Arizona in Tucson. A 2001 graduate of New Trier High School, he joined
several other graduates of the North Shore school at the party.
One of them was his best friend Shea Fitzgerald, a 19-year-old
football player for Northern Illinois University.
Fitzgerald was a stand-out wrestler and football player at New Trier.
A learning disability threatened his academic eligibility when
colleges were recruiting him, but he overcame a form of dyslexia,
earned a full scholarship at Northern Illinois and hoped to play at
the pro level.
Neighbors said Fitzgerald was a favorite of local children. He worked
as a camp counselor for several summers and was popular with the kids,
one neighbor said.
New Trier officials said Farmer and Fitzgerald were best friends, and
that Farmer attended almost every one of Fitzgerald's athletic events
in high school. The two friends died together Sunday morning.
"This goes deep into the fabric of the community," said Fitzgerald's
aunt, Marybeth Rosenthal.
Family knew
A family friend said any time Farmer was around a hint of danger, he
would call his parents to say he was all right. The family heard about
the accident early Sunday, but they hadn't heard from their son.
"When they weren't able to get in touch with him on the cell phone,
they knew," said Edward Prevost, the rector at the Farmer family's
church, Christ Church in Winnetka.
Ben Bradford lost his fiance, Julie Sorkin, 25.
Speaking outside his family's home in Glencoe, Bradford wouldn't
discuss the collapse. He would only speak about the woman who in
December would have become his wife.
She had just completed her master's degree in social work at the
University of Chicago and had recently landed a job with the Special
Education District of Lake County, he said. She would have been a
social worker for children with special needs.
"She was just amazing, the way she interacted with kids," Bradford
said. "They'd literally run to her. Six-month-old babies would just
flirt with her."
Bradford and Sorkin graduated from New Trier in 1996, and they had set
their wedding date for Dec. 20 in Skokie. On Saturday, hours before
the party, the couple signed a contract to buy a house in
Wrigleyville.
"She wanted to decorate the whole thing with Pottery Barn," Bradford
said, chuckling at the memory. "She was just the happiest, sweetest
person you've ever met."
People at the Chicago real estate firm Draper and Kramer had just met
John Jackson, 22, a new hire who started in the company's research
department last week. With only five days under his belt, Jackson had
already made an impression on his boss.
"He had the stuff," said McKim Barnes, the company's vice president
for research and analysis. "There was a lot of competition for this
position. He won because of his writing quality as well as his
background."
Barnes said Jackson had a degree from Georgetown University and
enthusiasm that was contagious.
He said the native of Kansas City, Mo., was living with his sister in
Chicago while he searched for a place to live.
"This is a terrible blow," Barnes said. "This is a loss of a really
talented individual with great training and great potential. I'm
devastated."
While family and friends of some of the victims could not be found or
declined to comment, it's clear a thread of success ran through all
their lives.
Katherine Sheriff, 23, graduated from Duke University in 2001 with a
degree in political science, said Keith Lawrence, director of the
university's news service. She was a registered member of Duke's young
alumni club in Chicago.
A neighbor said she was a happy person who had recently taken a new
job.
Robert Koranda, 23, graduated from Naperville North High School in
1998, starred as a linebacker on the football team and went on to play
for Princeton University. He played one year there, but a recurring
shoulder injury forced him to quit the team, said Larry McKeon, head
football coach at Naperville North.
McKeon said Koranda remained a student at Princeton and graduated. He
described him as a leader and "a great young man."
"He was bright, very intelligent, very outgoing and helped younger
kids," McKeon said. "He was very approachable. I think that's what
people liked about him the most. You could come to him and it didn't
matter if you were 14 or 44, he spoke to you the same way."
Neil McCauley, a recently retired athletic director from Naperville
North, said Koranda had just gotten a job at a bank in downtown
Chicago and was excited to get his career under way.
"When you lose young men like this that are the leaders in our
community with great futures, it's a great loss to everyone," McKeon
said. "He touched so many people."
Kelly McKinnell, 26, used her eyes and a gift for photography to
affect those around her. Lynne Wellen, coordinator of the adult
education program at the Latin School of Chicago, said McKinnell
graduated from the Latin School in 1995.
She came back in 2001 to teach digital photography in the adult
education program and was applying to schools to get a graduate degree
in photography.
"She was a wonderful young woman. She really was. And she was a
terrific teacher," Wellen said. "Very full of life, very upbeat. An
exceedingly positive young woman."
`She's my only child'
McKinnell's mother, Jean Ware of Barrington, said her daughter had
just mailed her application to the Brooks Institute of Photography in
Santa Barbara, Calif., on Saturday morning.
"She's an only child ... she's my only child," Ware said. "You just
get numb."
Muhammed Hameeduddin, 24, graduated magna cum laude from Hope College
in Holland, Mich., in 2001 with a major in economics and mathematics,
said Tom Renner, director of public relations for the college.
Hameeduddin was on the dean's list all eight semesters and was active
in several student professional clubs, including the business and
economics club and the mathematics club, Renner said.
According to school records, Hameeduddin came to the school as an
international student from Karachi, Pakistan. Hameeduddin was working
as an actuary for Watson Wyatt Worldwide's Chicago office, Renner
said.
While loved ones remembered the victims, they also considered the
shared grief of a group of people who had touched lives across the
country.
"We're just praying for all these families," said Haynie, the father
of victim Margaret Haynie. "We're just relying on the Lord to get us
through, just praying for comfort for others. It's just a terrible
tragedy."
Kenpangborn
>Newsgroups: alt.true-crime
>
>This could be an off topic post, but there is probably SOME crime
>committed by the person (or people) responsible for the party
>(possibly exceeding the fire marshal s maximum number of people
>allowed on the porch).
To be sure. Having bee born in that area of Chicago and having stood on that
kind of porch at friends homes I can comment with some certainty that they were
not designed for large numbers of people. Most of those porches are 80 years
old and original. The one that collapsed was new. But the weight load was as
much as ten times what it was designed to hold.
The city had issued warnings against having crowds on the porches which is not
new. But shitferbrains college students beered up at a party are not likely to
be using the BIG head and recallint hat it isn't safe.
Kenpangborn
>Newsgroups: alt.true-crime
> Was it a private residence? I doubt there was an official allotment. If
the
>construction was shabby, that is one thing. I bet the owner and/or contractor
are going to get grief, even if there was no way they could anticipate that
many people being on the balcony.
I am sure you are right. Some asshole lawyer WILL file a suit saying that
the porch should have held 88,422 people.
The homeowner will be sued into oblivion for permitting the party!
Kenpangborn
>Newsgroups: alt.true-crime
>The pictures shown on TV certainly don't look like the apartment of wealthy
people.
Looks about a step above a ghetto.
Outward appearances can be deceiving. That is a nice area. The building is
common in Chicago. It was a 3 story building with 3 3 bedroom units, generally
about 1800 sq feet each. Generally they are quite nice units. Not mansions, but
nice for kids who want to live in a "fashionable" district close to various
venues for entertainment etc. The building is close to the baseball park for
the Cubs, and that alone makes it highly desireable.
The buildings mostly were constructed in the late 1920's. Some have a very rich
history of residents. Not sure of that building but some famous people have
lived in identical buildings near there.
One would have been Actress Kim Novak who maintained a home there for many
years.
>Too many people on the balcony, even
>elevators have load limits.
So do porches in Chicago, the beer'd up partygoers ignored the City's anual
warnings on overloading porches. They just were not designed to hold more than
10 people.
Kenpangborn
>Newsgroups: alt.true-crime
>It's probably an older building, but it is in the Wrigleyville section of the
northwest side of Chicago--a very expensive area filled with yuppies on the
rise. And about 95% of the students who go to New Trier come from very wealthy
homes.
Right. It is a very trendy area, and the "wealthy parents" buy those unts
for their kids going to college as an independence thing. It's kind of a status
thing for recent high school grands / college students to have their own condo
in Wrigleyville where they can have their parties and be on their own. Most of
those buildings were built between 1926 and 1936. They were originally built as
apartment buildings, but more recently have become condos. Last I heard they
were sellign for $450,000 or more delending on the building.
Kenpangborn
>Newsgroups: alt.true-crime
>Below, an update from the Chicago Tribune...the incident took place in
>a six-unit apartment building...
Some of the buildings are condos, that one may have been an apartment.
Didn't see the street address.
Mark Fenster
> Damn, you have to be a member to get in there, and the way my computer is
> limping along right now, I don't want to go through any more reading than I
> have to. :(
>
> sg
Some additional information on the rescue efforts of Chicago
firefighters...
Shocked firefighters found layers and layers of victims
By Dan Mihalopoulos, Tribune staff reporter.
Tribune staff reporters David Heinzmann and Brett McNeil contributed
to this report
Published June 30, 2003
The first firefighters at the scene of Sunday's deadly porch collapse
saw just three or four injured people crawling atop the tangle of
lumber crushed into a garden apartment's patio.
They realized what they were in for only when they dug into the pile
of debris that covered the mangled bodies of 12 who would die and
another 57 who were injured behind a three-story apartment building in
Lincoln Park.
"When we started pulling them out, we saw one layer and then another
layer and another layer," paramedic Martin Schnatterbeck said Sunday
afternoon. "We were able to get that first layer off quickly, and that
may have saved some lives."
Within about 10 minutes of their arrival, firefighters had removed all
of the victims, dead and alive, from the basement-level deck.
"My job was to separate those who had no hope from those who did have
hope," Schnatterbeck said.
In the pile, no piece of splintered lumber from the decks was more
than 5 feet long by 3 feet wide, said Chief Dennis Gault, a spokesman
for the Chicago Fire Department who arrived at the scene shortly
before 1 a.m., about 20 minutes after the collapse.
It appeared that most of the 12 who died were on the second-floor
porch, Gault said.
Some of those who were on the third-floor deck when it buckled "rode
the porch down," Gault said, and they were among those who were able
to walk away with relatively minor injuries.
The only "collapse rescue" truck in the city raced from its base on
Desplaines Street north on Halsted Street, but it turned out there
would be little use for the truck's concrete-cutting tools, hydraulic
struts and listening devices.
At 12:31 a.m. Sunday, when the call came into the firehouse at 2714 N.
Halsted St., some of the 10 firefighters on duty were lounging on the
wooden benches out front. Three minutes later, the engine and
hook-and-ladder truck from that station arrived on Burling Street, at
the mouth of an alley behind Wrightwood Avenue.
For the firefighters, the first hint of the magnitude of the emergency
was the crowd gathered behind the building. "There had to be 100
people in the alley," said Richard Florczak, a 29-year-old firefighter
and paramedic in training.
Before tackling the pile, a firefighter removed a barbecue grill
teetering from what remained of the deck's second level. Schnatterbeck
said he used a ladder to help down two men who dangled from the
second-floor railing.
Florczak severely sprained his ankle and was later hospitalized
because a victim struggling to emerge from the wreckage knocked him
backward off of a wall between the building's stairwell and the
basement-level patio.
It didn't take long for authorities to realize the extent of the
crisis. By 12:43 a.m., the Chicago Fire Department had deemed the
scene a "Plan 3" emergency, flooding the area with more than 15
ambulances and 100 personnel.
An alarm of another sort was sounded at the Burwood Tap, a bar across
Wrightwood from the apartment building where three levels of decking
collapsed on top of one another.
"I knew something was going on when my customers all had their cell
phones ring at once and ran out," said John Snyder, the bar's manager.
A crowd of sobbing victims spilled from the alley, Snyder said.
"They were broken, bloodied, bruised ... a lot of bleeding, a lot of
ripped off skin," he said. "They all just ended up in the alley. They
just stood there because they didn't know what else to do."
When firefighters and police officers arrived at the scene, "It was
very chaotic and they seemed outmanned," said Rick Frommeyer, 37, who
lives on Wrightwood. "But they very quickly got on top of the
situation."
Firefighters using chainsaws and gas-driven circular saws cut lumber
to try to free victims.
The "mass casualty" rig housed at the firehouse on Halsted was put to
good use. One of only two such trucks in the city, the rig is
outfitted with more than 30 backboards and neck braces.
Schnatterbeck, 35, said that the dead appeared to have been crushed or
asphyxiated. He said he had tried to tune out the din of friends
looking for the injured, though he recalled one man who was seeking
his fiance in the pile.
"If you get so wound up by all this horrendous [stuff] going on around
you, then you can't operate as you should," Schnatterbeck said.
"All those people in the body bags ... I wish it were different, but
it's not. I'm sorry, because they were young people, younger than me,
and that kills you."
Mark Fenster
Below, one story that reminds us that life can be fleeting.
Lost lives remind us life is fragile
By Jimmy Greenfield
RedEye
Published June 30, 2003 [Chicago Tribune]
The first thing I did upon hearing 12 people died when a porch
collapsed early Sunday morning on the North Side was sift through the
key words in the initial reports that would eliminate the chance I
knew anybody involved.
"New Trier High School grads"... "early 20s"... "Wrightwood and
Halsted."
About 10 years ago, just out of college and with a wider circle of
friends, I'd have been worried. But being a 35-year-old Highland Park
High School graduate, and not having been invited to a kegger on
anybody's front or back porch for some time, a wave of relief settled
in.
The chance that I, or anybody close to me, would know any of the dead
or injured seemed remote enough that it was OK to begin my day.
Joe Lekas didn't have it so easy.
The 22-year-old Glenview man woke up Sunday and learned about the
porch collapse, which came as a bit of a shock because he was supposed
to be at that party.
"I'm in summer school; I had a project to do," Lekas explained. "I
figured if I went out to a party there was no chance I'd be waking up
early. So I just decided to stay home last night."
After getting the news, Lekas didn't know what to do, so he drove down
to the city while calling his friends on their cell phones. Nobody
answered.
Nobody.
Police were able to cut off access to the alleyway leading to the
porch, but media were stationed directly in front of it. Lekas found
his way there and stood against a wall, chain-smoking and waiting for
his cell phone to ring.
"It's just very scary to think about that I don't know if this is the
last place they were or if they're home right now or if they're in a
hospital somewhere," he said. "I have no idea." By early afternoon, he
learned that two of his friends were fine, having left the party early
because it was so crowded, and the list of fatalities didn't include
any of his friends. But Lekas said one of the victims, Sam Farmer, was
a New Trier classmate.
I've found an eerie silence accompanies most tragedies after the fact,
as if what happened can still be seen or heard if you just look and
listen close enough.
Behind the fallen porch, windows and doors leading into the building
were still open, and I could see rows of unused plastic beer cups
lined up on the kitchen counter of one of the apartments.
Not 100 yards on either side of the now-barricaded building, bikers,
joggers and gawkers came by either on purpose or by chance to get a
peek at the building where the 12 young people died hours earlier.
Before too long, everybody injured or killed in the tragedy will have
been identified. The families will start to grieve, the city will
investigate, and before too long, another tragedy will happen
somewhere.
But next time, you or I might not be so lucky. Our friends and
families might not be so lucky. These things don't always happen to
somebody else.
It may seem like there's nothing we can do, but that would be wrong.
There are many ways to pay homage to the people who died on Sunday.
This may seem awfully touchy-feely, but I just heard that one of the
victims was going to be married this fall, just about the same time I
will be.
I encourage you to hug somebody you love.
Kiss somebody you love.
Call somebody you love.
And when they pick up the phone, don't take it for granted.
Mark Fenster
No criminal charges are expected in Chicago's porch collapse, although
no construction permit was found for the porch.
Fenster
***********************************************************
City reviewing permits in porch collapse
By MAURA KELLY
The Associated Press
Published June 30, 2003, 1:30 PM CDT
City officials were investigating today whether proper permits had
been issued for a porch that collapsed, killing 12 people and injuring
at least 57 others.
Police spokesman David Bayless said the investigation continued but
criminal charges were unlikely.
``At this time, we haven't seen any evidence of criminal activity that
will lead us to seek charges,'' he said.
The collapse, which happened about 12:30 a.m. Sunday in the city's
affluent Lincoln Park neighborhood, occurred at a three-story building
that was converted in 1998 from five apartment units to three. City
Building Commissioner Norma Reyes said permits were issued for the
conversion work, but no construction permit was found for the porch.
``We're not sure if they had the proper permit to put up the porch,''
said Breelyn Pete, spokeswoman for the city's Buildings Department.
The collapse has prompted questions about the safety of porches and
whether weight limits should be imposed on them.
As many as 50 people, most of them in their early 20s, had crammed
onto the apartment's third-floor porch for a party when the floor
dropped from under them, sending people and debris crashing to the
ground.
Seven men and five women, many of them on the porches directly below,
were sandwiched between the falling floors and killed. This morning,
12 small, white wooden crosses were placed on the ground behind the
apartment building, each bearing the name of one of the dead. Several
bouquets of pink roses and white and lavender daisies were on the
sidewalk in front of the building. A red plastic cup sat on the ground
nearby, a reminder of the party.
A structural engineer conducted a preliminary examination and
determined that the porch was sound, Reyes said Sunday.
Reyes said it was unclear if the porch, which was torn down Sunday
afternoon, exceeded the scope of the work that was allowed under the
permits for the rehab work at the building.
The building's owner, who Reyes said was in Canada, and its management
company did not immediately return telephone calls by The Associated
Press.
Gus
> >From: gmsp...@aol.com (Sarah Monroe)
> >Newsgroups: alt.true-crime
>
> >The pictures shown on TV certainly don't look like the apartment of wealthy
> people.
> Looks about a step above a ghetto.
>
> Outward appearances can be deceiving. That is a nice area. The building is
> common in Chicago. It was a 3 story building with 3 3 bedroom units, generally
> about 1800 sq feet each. Generally they are quite nice units. Not mansions, but
> nice for kids who want to live in a "fashionable" district close to various
> venues for entertainment etc. The building is close to the baseball park for
> the Cubs, and that alone makes it highly desireable.
>
> The buildings mostly were constructed in the late 1920's. Some have a very rich
> history of residents. Not sure of that building but some famous people have
> lived in identical buildings near there.
> One would have been Actress Kim Novak who maintained a home there for many
> years.
Can you try to be accurate? You just told a God damned lie! Kim
Novak lived miles away from that part of Chicago! Miles away! She
didn't live anywhere near the site of that porch collapse Stupid!
Mark Fenster
Gentlepeople,
The information below may give a boost to (likely) civil lawsuits due
to this incident...
Fenster
************************
Permits Probed in Chicago Porch Collapse
By MAURA KELLY
Associated Press Writer
Published June 30, 2003, 8:32 PM CDT
CHICAGO -- City officials Monday were investigating whether proper
construction permits had been issued for a porch that collapsed,
killing 12 people and injuring at least 57 others.
The collapse happened about 12:30 a.m. Sunday in the city's affluent
Lincoln Park neighborhood at a three-story building that was converted
from five apartment units to three. City officials said the
third-floor wooden porch was apparently rebuilt at the same time.
No criminal charges will be filed because the collapse was a civil
matter, said police spokesman Carlos Herrera.
Officials issued a permit in 1998 to LG Properties, the management
company for the apartment building, only to install four furnaces, air
conditioners and water heaters, said buildings department spokeswoman
Maria Toscano.
Earlier on Monday, Chicago Building Commissioner Norma Reyes said
permits had been issued for the conversion work. However, officials
later determined the porch and the conversion were not authorized.
Toscano said the city was looking for any similar violations at 27
other properties in Chicago managed by LG Properties.
Building owner Philip Pappas, who Reyes said was in Canada, did not
return phone calls for comment from The Associated Press. LG
Properties referred calls to Mike Aufrecht, whom they identified as a
partner. He did not return calls from The Associated Press.
Pappas has been named as a defendant in at least three Housing Court
cases for three different addresses other than where the porch
collapsed, said Jenny Hoyle, spokeswoman for the city's Law
Department. All the cases included problems with porches on the
buildings, which were quickly fixed, Hoyle said.
One of those cases cited Pappas and others for "failure to rebuild or
replace dilapidated and dangerous porch," court records show.
A structural engineer conducted a preliminary examination and
determined that the porch was sound before the collapse, Reyes said
Sunday. City officials are investigating whether the porch gave way
because it was overloaded.
The collapse has prompted questions about the safety of porches and
whether weight limits should be posted.
As many as 50 people, most of them in their early 20s, were crammed
onto the apartment's third-floor porch for a party when the floor
dropped from under them, sending people and debris crashing to the
ground.
Seven men and five women, many of them on the porches directly below,
were killed.
The building's owner, who Reyes said was in Canada, and its management
company did not immediately return calls from The Associated Press.
On Monday morning, 12 small, white wooden crosses were placed on the
ground behind the apartment building, each bearing the name of one of
the dead. Several bouquets of pink roses and white and lavender
daisies were on the sidewalk in front of the building.
Northwest of Chicago, eight people were taken to the hospital after a
deck on a second-floor apartment in Rockford collapsed Sunday night.
Eleven people were on the deck when the deck gave way with a crack.
Matt Zanon
>>history of residents. Not sure of that building but some famous people have
>>lived in identical buildings near there.
Most buildings in Lincoln Park date back to well before the "late
1920's". According to the Cook County Assessor's Office, the building on
which the porch collapsed was constructed in 1893.
William Haverly
> >From: Fenster_2...@hotmail.com (Mark Fenster)
> >Newsgroups: alt.true-crime
>
> >
> >This could be an off topic post, but there is probably SOME crime
> >committed by the person (or people) responsible for the party
> >(possibly exceeding the fire marshal s maximum number of people
> >allowed on the porch).
>
> To be sure. Having bee born in that area of Chicago and having stood on that
> kind of porch at friends homes I can comment with some certainty that they were
> not designed for large numbers of people.
You must really be starved for attention if you're scraping the bottom
of the barrel to connect yourself to the incident like that. Being
born in a certain city doesn't make you an expert on their porches.
Some people will do anything to be able to share the spotlight of a
crime. I hate people like you. Born in Chicago. BFD!!! If I give you
25 cents will you try to rent a life?
atheist_jhc
Johnny Formosa built Kim Novak's home right on the shores of Lake
Michigan in Miller Beach about 30 minutes from downtown Chicago.
http://members.aol.com/chriskuc/index.html
Mark Fenster
Gentlepeople,
The City of Chicago has determined that the porch was illegal...
Fenster
******************************************************
City: Porch was illegal
Structure had no permit; tragedy claims its 13th victim
By David Heinzmann and Sabrina L. Miller, Tribune staff reporters.
Tribune staff reporters Jon Yates, David Heinzmann and Ofelia Casillas
contributed to this report. Tribune staff reporters David Mend
Published July 1, 2003
The porch that collapsed early Sunday killing 13 and injuring more
than 50 in Lincoln Park was built illegally without a city permit,
Buildings Commissioner Norma Reyes said Monday.
Kelly Pagel, of Minnetonka, Minn., the 13th fatality, died Monday at
Illinois Masonic Medical Center.
After making no public statements about the tragedy earlier Monday,
Reyes appeared at a late afternoon news conference and said the owner
of 713 W. Wrightwood Ave., Philip J. Pappas, applied for permits for
heating, cooling and plumbing improvements in 1998 but then renovated
the entire building without permission.
The owner went beyond the scope of the permit and illegally converted
the building from five units to three, as well as built a new back
porch, she said.
"What I'm saying is that the porch that's on the plans is not the
porch that collapsed," she said. "That porch on the plans is different
dimensions and specifically says `existing porch,' and when they
submitted the plans they didn't submit a request or an application for
any change to that porch ... so in fact that porch was done without
permits."
The porch collapsed about 12:30 a.m. Sunday, while as many as 60
people were crowded on its second- and third-floor levels, and more
people were on the stairs as they left a large party at the
apartments.
Pappas and his management companies, L.G. Properties and P&A
Properties, control as many as 40 buildings on the North Side. The
Wrightwood building is operated by L.G. Properties.
Pappas was on a canoe trip in Canada and had not yet been notified of
the tragedy by Monday evening, officials said. A business associate of
Pappas, who fielded questions for L.G. Properties on condition that he
remain anonymous, said company officials still believe the porch had a
proper permit, although they could not produce any documentation.
It would not be the first time Pappas has built a porch without a
permit. The city cited Pappas in Housing Court in 2002 for building a
similar back porch without a permit at his building at 1415 W. Belle
Plaine Ave.
Permit being processed
City Law Department officials said it appeared the permit application
was being processed at the time of the citation because the case was
dismissed at the first court date. The fact that the case was
dismissed so quickly also indicated the porch had been built to code,
despite the lack of a permit, Law Department spokeswoman Jennifer
Hoyle said.
Pappas also was sued by the city on two other occasions for problems
with back porches. Two years ago at his 7-flat building at 2704 N.
Mildred Ave., the city found he had failed "to rebuild or replace
dilapidated and dangerous porch" and he had allowed tenants to
illegally keep barbecue grills on the porch decks. Court records show
the case was closed three weeks later.
In another 2001 case, Pappas was cited for having a dilapidated and
dangerous porch at his building at 3602 N. Hermitage Ave. Court
records show the porch was repaired in about a month.
The company settled a 2000 lawsuit by a tenant who injured his leg
when a stair on the back porch of Pappas' building at 1336 W. Waveland
Ave. gave way.
An engineer for plaintiff Patrick Kramer inspected the stairwell and
testified it was defectively designed, constructed and assembled and
"is in an unreasonably dangerous condition," according to court
documents. Kramer, who had two surgeries, said he received a $150,000
settlement.
L.G. Properties manager Jack Emery turned over the name of the
contractor who built the Wrightwood porch to city officials Monday
morning, the business associate said. Reyes said city officials were
trying to contact the contractor, George Koutroumbis.
Koutroumbis, 74, is being treated for cancer at a North Side hospital.
Reached by telephone Monday evening, he said he "probably did" build
the porch, but he did not feel well enough to discuss it.
Koutroumbis' sister, with whom he lives on the North Side, said her
brother's work was not to blame because the porch was overloaded.
"I feel very sorry for all those young people losing their lives. But
... I don't understand why they allowed that to happen," said Theodora
Alek, 70. "No matter who built the porch, it probably would have come
down."
Responsibility disputed
Pappas' business associate said company officials believed the
contractor was responsible for securing the permit for the porch.
However, he said L.G. Properties acted as the general contractor for
the 1998 renovation, and city officials said the company took out the
permits for all of the other work.
Mayor Richard Daley, who is in Ireland, issued a statement including
condolences for the families of the victims.
"The Buildings Department will thoroughly investigate the incident to
determine whether any city ordinances were violated," the statement
read.
City workers demolished the remaining pieces of the porch structure
Sunday and carted away the debris. The spokesman for L.G. Properties
said the company would have preferred to have the debris remain in
place longer for further study, but city officials told them they
wanted to replace the porch as soon as possible so other tenants can
return.
The building was last inspected in November 2002, but Reyes said there
was no way to discover the porch had been illegally installed because
inspectors generally are looking for signs of disrepair. Preliminary
reports show the porch appeared structurally sound.
"If someone is bound and determined to break the law sometimes,
unfortunately, they get away with it," Reyes said.
Since the incident, 51 calls about unsafe porches have been placed to
311, the city's non-emergency number. City inspectors are
investigating those calls, Reyes said, as well as 24 other properties
Pappas owns.
"There are so many of these structures built that are never tested or
inspected by anyone," said Bill Bast, president of the Illinois
Structural Engineers Association. "What you usually have is a
contractor or carpenter who says, `I've done a million of these and I
know what I'm doing.' But it often isn't done right ... and people
never get caught unless someone happens to report it or an inspector
happens to swing by."
Property owners on the North Side fear the city may now crack down
unfairly on landlords.
"How do you tell people that they can't use an amenity that has been
put there for them?" said George Kass, who owns a management firm that
runs 220 rental buildings on the North Side. "I just hope the city
doesn't overreact, because 75 percent of the issue here was just
common sense."
Friends and relatives of the victims visited the building Monday to
pay their respects.
Aurora carpenter Greg Zanis, who has delivered wood crosses to the
site of the Columbine High School shootings and the E2 club stampede,
arrived at 9 a.m. with 12 crosses.
After realizing one of the victims was likely Muslim, Zanis returned
with a dozen teddy bears that he displayed in a prayer circle. Later
in the day, he said he heard at least one of the victims was Jewish
and hoped the prayer circle could serve as an alternate memorial for
Jewish victims as well.
"I didn't want to offend anybody," Zanis said. "It's the same
thing--there's only one God. We're all in this together."
Kenpangborn
>Newsgroups: alt.true-crime
>Below, one story that reminds us that life can be fleeting.
>Lost lives remind us life is fragile
Yep, the more recent information says the work was done recently with NO
permits and it appears the anchors to the building were improper. Looks like
there will be a full table for Chicagoland lawyers.
Kenpangborn
>From: gosp...@yahoo.com (Gus)
>Newsgroups: alt.true-crime, milw.general, fl.general, chi.general
> Can you try to be accurate? You just told a God damned lie! Kim
>Novak lived miles away from that part of Chicago! Miles away! She
>didn't live anywhere near the site of that porch collapse Stupid!
>
When she was a kid? I understood she grew up in the lincoln park area.
Kenpangborn
>From: Matt Zanon mza...@mattzanon.org
>Newsgroups: alt.true-crime, milw.general, fl.general, chi.general
Why the corsposting to TOTALLY UNRELATED newsgroups?
>Most buildings in Lincoln Park date back to well before the "late 1920's".
According to the Cook County Assessor's Office, the building on which the
porch collapsed was constructed in 1893.
I don't know, I grew up near there (Portage Park Area) and my grandfather
built the house about 1928. Most of the development on the northwest side was
about that same era. It could be 1893 construction in Chicago is all over the
block. Buildings burn and are rebuilt etc. But as I recall most of the area
around Wrigley was built up in the late 20's.
Kenpangborn
>Newsgroups: alt.true-crime, milw.general, fl.general, chi.general,
>alt.atheism
>
> Johnny Formosa built Kim Novak's home right on the shores of Lake
>Michigan in Miller Beach about 30 minutes from downtown Chicago.
Which one? The one she built or the one she grew up in?
Kenpangborn
>Newsgroups: alt.true-crime
>You must really be starved for attention if you're scraping the bottom
>of the barrel to connect yourself to the incident like that.
Connect myself to it or comment on it?
>Being born in a certain city doesn't make you an expert on their porches.
Got a reading problem? I was born in the "Wrigley" area.
>I hate people like you.
Honey you're not my type either.
Carol Lee Smith
> > One would have been Actress Kim Novak who maintained a home there for many
> > years.
> Can you try to be accurate? You just told a God damned lie! Kim
> Novak lived miles away from that part of Chicago! Miles away! She
> didn't live anywhere near the site of that porch collapse Stupid!
Well, he did say "would have been." However, he didn't say "if ....."
;-)
Perhaps he doesn't understand "would have been."
Carol Lee Smith
> Johnny Formosa built Kim Novak's home right on the shores of Lake
> Michigan in Miller Beach about 30 minutes from downtown Chicago.
> http://members.aol.com/chriskuc/index.html
"Sorry, We Can't Find That Page
You might try retyping the URL, or searching below. "
http://members.aol.com/chriskuc/index.html
Mark Fenster
There may also be some issues concerning how the porch and steps were
connected to the building. A different connection method may have
provided better protection from collapse.
I've been to New Orleans during Mardi Gras. I've seen PLENTY of
people standing on some old porches during the Mardi Gras parades. On
Fat Tuesday, the porches on St. Charles Street can be packed with
people. However, I've not heard of one of those porches collapsing.
I'm surprised that the porch on Wrightwood collapsed. I hope the
investigation by the City of Chicago can pinpoint the cause.
The easy answer is the porch was overloaded with people and collapsed
due to too much weight. Such a conclusion may be credible, but I would
like to see analysis on the way the porch was connected to the
building, how much weight could the porch safely withstand, were the
stairways somehow involved in the mishap etc., before coming to a
conclusion that the porch was overloaded.
Fenster
Below, the City of Chicago building code is unclear with respect to
the means to construct a sturdy porch...
***********************************************
Chicago building code unclear on guidelines
By Dan Mihalopoulos and Rex W. Huppke, Tribune staff reporters.
Tribune staff reporter Michael Higgins contributed to this report
Published July 1, 2003
The best way to construct a sturdy porch is a subject of debate among
builders, and Chicago's building code and city officials offered no
clear answers Monday in the wake of the deadly weekend porch collapse
in Lincoln Park.
Some builders say it's best to connect a porch to a building with a
large board fastened horizontally across a wall, anchored by bolts at
regular intervals. That's how the porch that collapsed in Lincoln Park
early Sunday, killing 13 and injuring 56, was attached.
Others favor a different method that uses square support beams
embedded in a building's masonry and jutting out perpendicular to the
wall.
But what many builders want--and what the city's code fails to
provide--are specific guidelines on how porches in Chicago should be
built.
"If you've ever spent any time trying to interpret the building codes,
it's tough," said Dean Ivkovich of Porch People, a Lincoln Park
company that builds as many as 100 porches a year. "I was working on
another project a couple of weeks ago and was trying to go through the
building code, and I just got spun around in circles."
Ivkovich said he was contacted Monday by officials from the city's
Building Department who said they want to bring porch builders
together within the next week for a meeting on how to make the
structures more secure.
At a news conference Monday, city officials pledged a thorough
investigation into the Lincoln Park tragedy and asked residents to
heed warnings about overloading porches.
"The codes are very difficult to follow because they're generic," said
Ivkovich, who plans to recommend the city adopt a set of standardized
porch designs.
"The city spends more time worrying about the rooftops of Wrigley
Field than they do on the thousands of porches in the city. They need
to devote a chapter of the local ordinance and basically try to
classify these porches and come up with some standards."
Breelyn Pete, a spokeswoman for the Building Department, said the
building commissioner is considering seeking amendments to the rules
for porch and deck construction.
Contractors said code requires that porches, decks and balconies in
Chicago be built to handle loads of at least 100 pounds per square
foot, though most say the structures they design could withstand twice
that weight.
"It would be really tough to overload a deck that's theoretically
designed for 100 pounds per square foot," said Jeffrey Garrett, a
structural engineer at Construction Technology Laboratories Inc. in
Skokie. "If you really start packing folks together, you could. [But]
that would be really tough."
On Monday, the only sign that a porch once stood behind the house at
713 W. Wrightwood Ave. was an array of barely visible holes in the
brick masonry. Building inspectors had torn the remaining parts of the
structure down and hauled them away.
The quick cleanup troubled some observers, who wondered how the
investigation would move forward without evidence of the collapse.
Michael Casey, a past president of the American Society of Home
Inspectors, said that because porches are simple structures, such
disaster scenes seldom require a lengthy examination.
"Wood frame construction is rather simple, and there was no reason to
leave it there and leave the reminder of what happened," Casey said
from his office in Virginia. "That's a typical thing that would happen
in a catastrophe, people want to clean it up as soon as possible."
Pete said officials collected all the evidence they needed before
hauling away the wreckage.
"We had several inspectors out there shortly after it happened, all
day yesterday, this morning," she said. "Inspectors are continuing to
investigate. We're taking pictures, we videotaped it."
Builders had varying opinions Monday on the construction of the
collapsed porch.
The porch had been affixed to the three-flat apartment building by
bolts drilled through a narrow wood plank known as a ledger board. At
the rear of each floor, a ledger board extended horizontally across
the building.
Critics of that school of porch construction said you have to look no
further than the other buildings in the 700 block of Wrightwood Avenue
to see how the job should be done.
The porch of the building immediately west, for instance, relies on
beams called lookouts, which are often six inches square and are
inserted deep into the back wall.
George Perszen, owner of Dovetail Decks & Porches in Chicago, said he
believes lookouts are more stable. He said he expects investigators to
focus on the way the ledger board was fastened to the back of the
apartment building.
"I bet you that after this they will ban ledger boards or re-evaluate
the ways they are fastened," Perszen said.
Mark Beasanski of Mark Builders said he favors lookouts in porches for
newly constructed homes, but he does not recommend boring holes in
older buildings to insert them.
"I don't like to mess with the integrity of 100-year-old brick walls,"
he said.
Mark Wicik of Just Decks in Chicago, however, believes that ledger
boards are the way to go.
"In my opinion, the ledger board system, if done correctly, is far
better than the lookout beam system," Wicik said. "But if it's not
anchored properly, it's worthless."
Ivkovich and other builders say they'd welcome additional guidance
from the city on ways to bring some uniformity to porch designs and
construction in Chicago, with the hope that the disaster in Lincoln
Park isn't repeated.
"Hopefully the porch on Wrightwood was an anomaly," Ivkovich said.
"There needs to be some set of standards that are clearer than they
are right now."
Ranger00089
>Yep, the more recent information says the work was done recently with NO
>permits and it appears the anchors to the building were improper. Looks like
>there will be a full table for Chicagoland lawyers.
The deaths of these young people are tragic to be sure. The responsibility
lays with them. They were partying, overloading the porch, they caused the
accident. And remember, the majority of people killed were on the porches
below the overcrowded one. The families of those dead people should be suing
the people from the porch above them.
Steve, SFC/US Army
Mark Fenster
> kenpa...@aol.com (Kenpangborn) wrote in message news:<20030701100742...@mb-m07.aol.com>...
> > >From: Fenster_2...@hotmail.com (Mark Fenster)
> > >Newsgroups: alt.true-crime
>
> > >Below, one story that reminds us that life can be fleeting.
> > >Lost lives remind us life is fragile
> >
> >
> > Yep, the more recent information says the work was done recently with NO
> > permits and it appears the anchors to the building were improper. Looks like
> > there will be a full table for Chicagoland lawyers.
>
> There may also be some issues concerning how the porch and steps were
> connected to the building. A different connection method may have
> provided better protection from collapse.
Gentlepeople,
The City of Chicago will sue the owners and managers of a building
where a porch collapsed, killing 13 people. The city's suit should
provide fodder for civil lawsuits from the victims (dead and injured).
Fenster
*******************************************
Chicago Officials Suing in Porch Collapse
By NICOLE ZIEGLER DIZON : Associated Press Writer
Jul 1, 2003 : 8:55 pm ET
CHICAGO -- City officials plan to sue the owners and managers of a
building where 13 people died in a porch collapse over the weekend,
claiming there was no permit to build the porch.
The complaint also will allege the three-story apartment building was
illegally converted from five units to three, according to the
Building Department. City building officials plan to ask for a court
order requiring immediate replacement of the porch and could seek up
to $500 a day for each violation.
The city will file a complaint Wednesday in Housing Court against LG
Properties, LG Properties president Philip Pappas and Restoration
Specialists LLC, the Building Department said Tuesday.
"Although the cause of this tragedy is still under investigation, it
is clear that the defendants did not follow the requirements of the
building code when the building was rehabbed in 1998," said Norma
Reyes, buildings commissioner.
Pappas is scheduled to return Thursday from a trip to Canada,
according to a woman who answered the phone at LG Properties and would
not comment. Mike Aufrecht, an attorney for Pappas, did not
immediately return calls from The Associated Press.
Directory assistance did not have a listing for Restoration
Specialists.
The collapse occurred about 12:30 a.m. Sunday during a party at the
apartment building in Lincoln Park, an affluent neighborhood popular
with recent college graduates.
About 50 people, most in their early 20s, were on a third-floor porch
when it fell, causing a chain reaction that sent porches on the second
and first floor plummeting to the basement.
Seven men and six women died, most of them crushed on the lower
porches. At least 57 people were injured.
Police have said they do not plan to file criminal charges. The
Buildings Department is inspecting 42 other buildings owned or managed
by Pappas and LG Properties.
The first funeral for one of the victims of the collapse, 25-year-old
Julie Sorkin, was held Tuesday. Services for most of the other victims
were scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday.
Families of those who lived at the apartment building were allowed
inside Tuesday to retrieve their belongings.
stargazer
"Ranger00089" <range...@aol.comnojunk> wrote in message
news:20030701213219...@mb-m24.aol.com...
Not if those decks/porches were constructed shoddily without proper support
and attachment to the dwelling. At the complex here where a similar
situation occurred, it was found the decks weren't attached to the building
properly, in fact they weren't attached to the actual dwelling at all,
except for a couple nails here and there. Once one of the decks fell, and
all were inspected, they were all condemned.
sg
Mark Fenster
> "Ranger00089" <range...@aol.comnojunk> wrote in message
> news:20030701213219...@mb-m24.aol.com...
> >
> > The deaths of these young people are tragic to be sure. The
> responsibility
> > lays with them. They were partying, overloading the porch, they caused the
> > accident. And remember, the majority of people killed were on the porches
> > below the overcrowded one. The families of those dead people should be
> suing
> > the people from the porch above them.
> >
> >
> > Steve, SFC/US Army
>
>
> Not if those decks/porches were constructed shoddily without proper support
> and attachment to the dwelling. At the complex here where a similar
> situation occurred, it was found the decks weren't attached to the building
> properly, in fact they weren't attached to the actual dwelling at all,
> except for a couple nails here and there. Once one of the decks fell, and
> all were inspected, they were all condemned.
>
> sg
Gentlepeople,
The City of Chicago has determined that the weight of the crowd caused
the porch to collapse...one joist splintered...even if one joist
splintered, others think that construction issues with different
connection components might have contribution to the collapse of the
porch.
Fenster
*********************************************
Crowd's weight seen as causing porch collapse
By Dan Mihalopoulos and David Heinzmann, Tribune staff reporters.
Tribune staff reporters Rex W. Huppke, Brett McNeil, Rudolph Bush,
Sabrina L. Miller, Geoff Dougherty and Manya A. Brachear contribute
Published July 2, 2003
The porch collapse that killed 13 people over the weekend apparently
was triggered when at least one wooden joist supporting the floor
"snapped in half" under the weight of dozens of partygoers, a source
close to the investigation said Tuesday.
Inspectors have not ruled out faulty construction as a contributing
factor, but are leaning toward the conclusion that the collapse was
simply the result of too many party guests overloading a properly
built structure, the source said.
"The preliminary finding is that the main and only reason for the
accident was the weight of the people on the porch," the source said.
"If a family of eight went out there and barbecued on each level of
that porch every day for 10 years, this never would have happened."
Nonetheless, the source said, "We're still going through every speck
of lumber. We're not done checking everything out."
The source said it is still unclear whether one or more of the
supports snapped to set off Sunday's collapse of the three-level back
porch at 713 W. Wrightwood Ave.
"It was almost like a `V,'" the source said, describing the splintered
joist. "As soon as one gives way, the rest have to support that much
more weight, that much more pressure," causing the porch to buckle and
crash.
Lawyers for the city said they would file a complaint in Cook County
Housing Court on Wednesday, citing the owner of the apartment for
adding the three-level back porch and staircase without permits.
But lawyers and building officials also were trying to determine
whether they could add charges of faulty construction to the case
against Philip J. Pappas, Law Department spokeswoman Jennifer Hoyle
said.
Pappas was in Canada on a canoe trip at the time of the tragedy, and
his spokesman said he was expected back in Chicago on Thursday.
Pappas' management company, L.G. Properties, distributed notices to
all of his North Side tenants Tuesday, advising them of a new company
policy prohibiting more than five people from being on back porches at
any one time. The notice also prohibited tenants from storing anything
other than barbecue grills on the porches, though city ordinances
prohibit grills from wooden structures.
The spokesman for L.G. Properties did not return phone calls seeking
comment.
Inspectors on Tuesday continued to examine Pappas' numerous North Side
properties, adding 18 to the 24 already on the list.
"We will have the results in from those inspections, possibly
tomorrow," Buildings Department spokeswoman Breelyn Pete said.
Three building inspectors appeared Tuesday morning at Bill Kelly and
Brendan Ansier's apartment at 1415 W. Belle Plaine Ave., on the city's
North Side. The inspectors checked plumbing and electrical wiring, and
seemed particularly interested in the fact that the building had been
converted from a three-flat to a duplex in recent years, Kelly said.
Inspectors had examined their back deck on Monday, Kelly said.
Ald. Bernard Stone (50th) said he planned to meet Wednesday with
Buildings Commissioner Norma Reyes to learn more about the
investigation. He said he has had little communication with building
officials since the collapse.
The chairman of the state Senate's Committee for Health and Human
Services proposed Tuesday that the state examine municipal building
codes and look into the guidelines landlords provide to tenants
regarding porch capacity.
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Chicago) said the investigation could prompt
statewide regulations akin to the ban on pepper spray in nightclubs
that was passed after the E2 nightclub disaster Feb. 17, in which 21
people died in a stampede down a front stairway.
"It may be that the same is needed with respect to porch
construction," Obama said. "It probably should be the obligation of
every landlord and every condominium association to provide the needed
information to residents as to the capacity their porch can
accommodate."
Officials from the Buildings Department were unable Tuesday to answer
questions about how city code applies to the wood structures that
drape the back of buildings across Chicago.
Pete, the department's spokeswoman, said the structure that collapsed
Sunday falls under the city's definition of a porch, as opposed to a
deck or balcony. The city code lists a maximum-load requirement of 100
pounds per square foot for decks and balconies but does not show a
figure for porches.
Pete could not say Tuesday what the standard load requirement is for
porches in the city.
"At this point I can't address it," she said.
Investigators are awaiting an analysis on the porch collapse being
conducted by Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates Inc. of Northbrook, an
engineering firm that specializes in evaluating historic buildings,
bridges and other structures.
"We expect it in the next week or so," Pete said. "It's a report that
will just kind of give us an assessment of how the porch was
constructed and it may help us determine if it was faulty or if the
porch was in disrepair."
City officials said Monday that Pappas had applied for permits for
heating, cooling and plumbing improvements in 1998 but then renovated
the entire building.
Asked why the inspectors who would have had to approve the work that
was done didn't notice that a new back porch was built, Pete said it's
possible the structure was built after the other work was done and
approved.
"We don't know the exact day when they built this porch," Pete said.
"They could have done all the other work . . . and then built the
porch six months later."
An expert who examined photographs of the debris said the evidence
appears to corroborate the theory that joists snapped.
"A plank can be overloaded," said Fari Barzegar, a civil engineer in
Berkeley, Calif.
But Barzegar said he also believes that the ledger board--the
horizontal plank at which the joists are joined to the brick
wall--should have held fast, even if the joists splintered.
"It could be that a joist failed as well as the ledger board," he
said. "It still seems that the ledger beam was not bolted adequately."
Barzegar criticized city officials for hastily clearing the evidence
from the site: "You want as many intelligent people as possible to
look at it, for the sake of the poor people who died and to avoid
similar problems in the future."
At the scene of the collapse, Ald. Vi Daley (43rd), Cortez Trotter,
executive director of the Office of Emergency Management and
Communication and Assistant Buildings Commissioner William Rooney
directed workers who removed plywood sheets from the building's front
door and a door leading into the basement apartment.
All refused to speak to reporters about what they were doing in the
building, but Larry Langford, a spokesman for Trotter's office, said
they were making sure it was safe for relatives of renters to come and
collect personal items.
Three men later arrived and were escorted into the building's front
door by Trotter and Rooney as police officers watched the front door.
The men emerged with golf clubs and bags of clothing as well as other
personal effects. Electricity and phone service were reconnected to
the building Tuesday, Langford said. The services were knocked out
when the porch collapsed.
Outside, a 13th white cross was added to a memorial of flowers and
keepsakes. The name of Kelly Pagel, who died Monday in Illinois
Masonic Medical Center from injuries suffered in the collapse, was
written on the new cross, and three friends of the 25-year-old knelt
beside it, crying.
Too upset to speak, the three young women left the alley together
quietly, arm in arm, as police officers stood watch over the site.
It was like that throughout the day, with people of every age walking
down the brick-paved alley off Burling Street and making their way
past the yellow police tape to the crosses and pictures of those who
died.
They spoke in hushed tones, and only to each other.
A spokeswoman for Illinois Masonic said Tuesday the hospital still was
treating four victims, all of whom where in fair condition, while a
fifth person was released.
Funeral arrangements for another victim, Muhammed Hameeduddin, were
announced Tuesday. Visitation and viewing will be held Wednesday at
the Muslim Community Center, 4830 N. Elston Ave., beginning at noon. A
prayer service will follow, from 1:15 to 2 p.m.
IBegg2Differ
>responsibility
>> lays with them. They were partying, overloading the porch, they caused the
>> accident. And remember, the majority of people killed were on the porches
>> below the overcrowded one. The families of those dead people should be
>suing
>> the people from the porch above them.
>>
>>
>> Steve, SFC/US Army
>
>
>Not if those decks/porches were constructed shoddily without proper support
>and attachment to the dwelling. At the complex here where a similar
>situation occurred, it was found the decks weren't attached to the building
>properly, in fact they weren't attached to the actual dwelling at all,
>except for a couple nails here and there. Once one of the decks fell, and
>all were inspected, they were all condemned.
>
>sg
>
>
This raises a question in my mind, though. If, in fact, the porch was
constructed shoddily, *but* it was so overloaded with people that it would have
collapsed even with benefit of the best possible construction, would the shoddy
construction then become irrelevant? Or would the fault be basically "shared"
between the parties at fault for the construction and the parties responsible
for the overloading, since both of those parties were contributing to what
would have been an unavoidable event at some point? It seems that either party
could argue that the tragedy would have eventually happened given the actions
of the other party. Assuming such an argument ever got to court (meaning it
wasn't settled out of court), I wonder what decision would be reached.
Mark Fenster
IBegg2Differ.
An interesting question. Depending upon the nature of the legal
questions, and instructions from a judge, a jury could split
negligence between the parties. The jury could be free to set the
percentages of the negligence for each party. A jury could decide 70%
for one party and 30% to the other party, or a jury could decide a
50-50 split.
Additionally, your question may get to the heart of many a future
lawsuit on the question. The City of Chicago has determined that the
porch was wider than allowed by city code and its floor supports too
thin, causing the structure to splinter and buckle under the weight of
dozens of party guests (see the next couple of posts on this thread
for specific details). Both issues (potential illegal construction
and too much weight) are very much in play when analyzing this porch
collapse.
Fenster
Mark Fenster
> constructed shoddily, *but* it was so overloaded with people that it would have
> collapsed even with benefit of the best possible construction, would the shoddy
> construction then become irrelevant? Or would the fault be basically "shared"
> between the parties at fault for the construction and the parties responsible
> for the overloading, since both of those parties were contributing to what
> would have been an unavoidable event at some point? It seems that either party
> could argue that the tragedy would have eventually happened given the actions
> of the other party. Assuming such an argument ever got to court (meaning it
> wasn't settled out of court), I wonder what decision would be reached.
Some additional specifics on the collapse of the porch...
City says porch lacked support, sues landlord
By David Heinzmann and Gary Washburn, Tribune staff reporters.
Tribune staff reporters Rex W. Huppke, Joshua S. Howes, Jeff Coen and
Sabrina L. Miller contributed to this report
Published July 3, 2003
The back porch that collapsed and killed 13 people over the weekend
was wider than allowed by city code and its floor supports too thin,
causing the structure to splinter and buckle under the weight of
dozens of party guests, city lawyers said Wednesday in a lawsuit filed
against the apartment building owner.
Building owner Philip J. Pappas, and his porch contractor, George
Koutroumbis, illegally erected a three-story porch using 2-by-8-inch
floor joists rather than the sturdier 2-by-10-inch joists required by
city code, according to the suit filed in Cook County Housing Court.
The suit also alleged that the 11-by-21-foot porch was a foot wider
than the maximum allowed under the code and exceeded a limit of 150
square feet per floor by more than 50 percent.
"I believe that the cause of these deaths was the fact that the porch
was constructed in violation of the law," Corporation Counsel Mara
Georges said.
With at least 114 people packed on the three-story structure, the
porch collapsed in the middle of the top level, she said, citing an
expert's opinion. "In other words, the joists broke and the porch
collapsed with the load on it."
City lawyers also cited Pappas for converting the building at 713 W.
Wrightwood Ave. from five units to three in 2000, in addition to
charging that the porch was built without permits in 1998. One of the
units is a ground-level dry cleaner.
The city is seeking fines of up to $500 for each day since the illegal
work was done, which could result in hundreds of thousands of dollars
in penalties.
Pappas, who was on a canoe trip in Canada at the time of the tragedy,
made his first public comment Wednesday in a written statement issued
through a public relations firm.
"I would like to express my deepest sympathy to the families and
friends of the deceased and those injured in this unimaginable
tragedy," he said in the statement. "My family and I are heartbroken
over the loss and injury of so many fine young people."
Pappas said he was cooperating with the city's investigation and had
hired professionals "to assist us in understanding the cause of this
terrible event."
He referred further questions to a lawyer, Michael Ficaro, who did not
immediately return calls for comment Wednesday afternoon.
Back porch overlooked
Despite annual inspections of the property due to a business on the
premises, Chicago building inspectors never noted the illegal
construction of the back porch. The most recent inspection, in
November 2002, produced only minor violations that did not involve the
porch, building officials said.
Georges insisted the city had no legal culpability in the tragedy. But
Ald. Edward Burke (14th) said that if it is true the porch was
improperly built and the deficiencies were not caught by the city,
some official must be held accountable.
"If a city inspector inspected that premise and failed to note the
kinds of conditions ... then it appears to me that inspector is going
to have to answer," he said.
The responsibility exists even if the focus of the inspections may
have been elsewhere, Burke asserted. However, he said he would not be
surprised if inspectors had stopped short of examining the porch.
"Would the inspector have examined the back porch of the facility? I
kind of doubt it. I suspect he would have gone to the commercial part
of the building, and that would have been the end of it."
Also Wednesday, Cook County State's Atty. Richard Devine assigned
First Assistant State's Atty. Robert Milan to review the evidence in
the porch collapse.
"Bob Milan is a highly experienced prosecutor who will closely examine
all the evidence in this tragedy to determine initially if there is
any criminal conduct, and if there is, to take the appropriate
action," Devine said Wednesday. "While the police have the obligation
to investigate and gather evidence, we want to assure the public that
our prosecutors will be reviewing the matter thoroughly and taking the
evidence wherever it leads us."
To date, police have said that they are conducting a death
investigation and have not yet found any evidence of a crime.
City officials also defended their decision to immediately tear down
the remaining sections of the porch on Sunday. Some personal injury
lawyers said the removal destroyed evidence.
"If you look at other incidents where there's been a partial collapse
of a structure, the city has almost always taken immediate action to
remove the remaining unstable parts," said Jennifer Hoyle, a city Law
Department spokeswoman.
Critics pointed to the preservation of the scene after February's E2
nightclub disaster as an example. But Hoyle said E2's disaster scene
was indoors, and not part of an unstable structure.
The collapsed porch was "in the middle of two occupied residential
buildings and abutting the public way," she said. "In that
circumstance the safest thing to do is remove it as quickly as
possible ... if two cars are involved in a wreck, we don't leave the
cars in the street until the lawyers have been able to study them."
Hoyle said all of the debris has been preserved and was photographed
extensively at the scene. The debris was initially taken to two
locations--the Grand Central Area police headquarters on the Northwest
Side and a second location she could not name. On Wednesday, it was
moved to a hangar at O'Hare Airport, she said.
Elliot Dudnik, a University of Illinois at Chicago architecture
professor, was hired to examine the debris. Dudnik declined to comment
Wednesday, citing the probable litigation in the case. Georges said
the professor found the 2-by-8-inch joists were inadequate to the task
of supporting the required 100 pounds per square foot on an
11-foot-wide deck.
Industry standard cited
The municipal code does not directly define requirements for
2-by-10-inch joists on porches, but a chapter of the code refers to
the city's adoption of an industry standard set by the American Forest
and Paper Association's National Design Specification for Wood
Construction, Hoyle said.
"These are published standards that all construction companies who
work with wood construction would be well aware of," she said.
However, several local builders said that they were unfamiliar with
the industry standard referred to in the city's lawsuit.
"It's very arbitrary to say that all porches need to built with
2-by-10s," said Frank Schubert, owner of Archadeck, a Chicago company.
The important thing is to assure that a porch will sustain a certain
load capacity, Schubert said.
Still, builders agreed that in the instance of the porch that
collapsed in Lincoln Park, they would not have felt comfortable using
2-by-8-inch joists for an 11-foot-wide porch.
"My rule is 2-by-10s for any span wider than 10 feet," said Mark
Wicik, of Just Decks in Chicago.
Inspectors fan out
City inspectors began fanning out across the Lincoln Park area Sunday
to perform spot-checks on porches and decks, Buildings Department
spokeswoman Breelyn Pete said Wednesday.
"The reason why we decided to canvass that area was because of the
high activity that was going on that weekend with the festivals and
the [gay pride] parade," Pete said. "The results of those spot-checks
are that we found 47 porches showed signs of some disrepair."
She said inspectors noted "possible design flaws" on 38 of the
porches. Inspectors will return to those sites soon to do a more
thorough evaluation, she said.
Seven of the porches were referred to the city's Law Department
because they were deemed "dangerous and hazardous."
The remaining two sites were referred to the city's administrative
hearing office for minor infractions, such as peeling paint, Pete
said.
Mark Fenster
> This raises a question in my mind, though. If, in fact, the porch was
> constructed shoddily, *but* it was so overloaded with people that it would have
> collapsed even with benefit of the best possible construction, would the shoddy
> construction then become irrelevant? Or would the fault be basically "shared"
> between the parties at fault for the construction and the parties responsible
> for the overloading, since both of those parties were contributing to what
> would have been an unavoidable event at some point? It seems that either party
> could argue that the tragedy would have eventually happened given the actions
> of the other party. Assuming such an argument ever got to court (meaning it
> wasn't settled out of court), I wonder what decision would be reached.
The City of Chicago is dancing around the question of whether porches
can be used for parties...
City adds to confusion on porches
Mixed messages continue with safety statement
By Gary Washburn, Tribune staff reporter.
Tribune staff reporter David Heinzmann contributed to this report
Published July 4, 2003
Though city officials have stressed in the days following a fatal
accident at a Lincoln Park apartment building that porches are not to
be used for parties, a senior official on Friday said that a properly
designed, full-size porch can handle 12 people safely.
The revelation by Denise Casalino of the Department of Construction
and Permits appeared to add to the mixed messages put out by City Hall
on the proper use of porches.
After Sunday's collapse, which claimed 13 lives, Buildings
Commissioner Norma Reyes said that porches were meant to be used for
entering and leaving apartments. Only a few weeks earlier, she issued
a news release reminding property owners to inspect their porches
before entertaining outdoors.
In the release, Reyes also said that the use of gas grills on wooden
porches, decks and balconies in buildings housing 20 or more people is
a fire hazard. Then she added, "People should use caution when
grilling around wooden and other flammable surfaces."
Casalino for the first time since Sunday's accident put a total on the
number of people who officials believe safely could have been on the
third-floor porch at 713 W. Wrightwood Ave.
"If it had been designed to code--which it wasn't--12 people," she
said. Witnesses said that scores of people attending a party appeared
to be on the porch at the time of the collapse. The city requires no
placards that show maximum capacity.
"Technically if you design it to code, you can have a lot of people on
there," Casalino said. "But remember the other purpose of this porch
and deck is to maintain access for fire. So you can't overload it with
all these people. In the event of a fire how would people get out?"
Casalino spoke at a City Hall news conference where Mayor Richard
Daley laid blame for the tragedy squarely on the building's owner,
insisted the city bore no responsibility and vowed to make any changes
necessary to ensure safety in the future.
"Our first priority is to find out what went wrong and to do whatever
needs to be done to ensure that these structures are designed, built
and used safely," Daley said, commenting publicly for the first time
since the tragedy. "We owe that to the families and loved ones and to
the people of Chicago because no matter what the circumstances, people
who lost loved ones want answers and they deserve answers."
Echoing remarks made by aides earlier in the week, Daley said that
landlord Philip Pappas did not obtain a permit to build the porch, and
"had he followed the law, he would have known that the structure was
unsafe.
"While questions have been raised whether the building code goes far
enough, the fact remains, when building owners disregard the process,
whatever that process is, the safety of our citizens will be
compromised," Daley said.
Pappas has referred all questions to his lawyer, Michael Ficaro, who
did not return calls for comment Thursday.
City inspectors failed to spot the allegedly illegal porch after the
owner obtained permits for other improvements at the building in 1998.
But John Roberson, head of the Construction and Permits Department,
insisted that "these were very specific inspectors who have technical
expertise in a particular area. They were there to take a look at the
furnace unit and the hot water heater. That was all. They would not
have had the expertise to look at anything else."
The Wrightwood building has undergone annual inspections that also
failed to catch the allegedly illegal porch. But those inspectors were
looking for "obvious and glaring deficiencies relating to
deterioration of the building," Roberson said. "The particular
inspectors who went out in this instance did not see anything obvious
and glaring."
In a lawsuit naming Pappas filed Wednesday, the city charged that
2-by-8-inch floor joists were used in the porch rather than the
required 2-by-10s. The 11-by-21-foot porch also was a foot wider than
permitted under the code, the city charged. Chicago code establishes a
strength standard of 100 pounds per square foot.
Pappas' building has undergone yearly city inspections, but only
because it has a business on the first floor. Daley was asked if there
were any way to ensure the integrity of porches on the thousands of
residential buildings that are not checked annually.
"I wouldn't know," he said.
Daley defended the controversial decision to tear down what remained
of the porch on Wrightwood on the day of the accident.
"It's a crime scene," he replied.
Precisely because it was the site of an accident, plaintiffs'
attorneys have contended that the decision to raze the remaining
structure was a poor one because evidence of what went wrong may have
been compromised.
Meanwhile, funeral services were held Thursday for three of the
victims: Sam Farmer, 21; Eileen Lupton, 22; and Henry Wischerath, 24.
Mark Fenster
> This raises a question in my mind, though. If, in fact, the porch was
> constructed shoddily, *but* it was so overloaded with people that it would have
> collapsed even with benefit of the best possible construction, would the shoddy
> construction then become irrelevant? Or would the fault be basically "shared"
> between the parties at fault for the construction and the parties responsible
> for the overloading, since both of those parties were contributing to what
> would have been an unavoidable event at some point? It seems that either party
> could argue that the tragedy would have eventually happened given the actions
> of the other party. Assuming such an argument ever got to court (meaning it
> wasn't settled out of court), I wonder what decision would be reached.
The need to protect remaining evidence....
City told to save remains of porch
By William Grady
Tribune staff reporter
Published July 5, 2003
A Cook County Circuit Court judge issued an emergency order Friday
that requires Chicago officials to preserve debris and other evidence
collected from the Lincoln Park apartment building where a porch
collapsed last weekend, killing 13 people.
The order was sought by attorneys representing the family of Kelly
McKinnell, a 26-year-old woman who was among those killed early Sunday
when porches gave way during a party at 713 W. Wrightwood Ave.
The attorneys said that they plan to file a wrongful-death lawsuit
Monday and that it was critical to preserve evidence.
"These items must be properly preserved and protected in order to
protect the rights of all parties and to afford all parties a fair
trial," according to legal documents filed by attorneys for Corboy &
Demetrio, a Chicago personal-injury law firm that represents Jean
Ware, McKinnell's mother.
Francis Patrick Murphy, one of the lawyers, echoed criticism by other
attorneys who have questioned the city's decision to tear down the
remaining sections of the porch and remove the debris. He said the
city had made no effort to catalog or sort the debris.
"It should have been left there until other experts had a chance to
examine it," he said. "If we didn't do this today, there would be
three more days during which the city would have an opportunity to
contaminate or destroy the evidence."
A spokeswoman for the city's Law Department said earlier this week
that the debris was removed because it was in the middle of two
occupied apartment buildings. The debris is being stored in a hangar
at O'Hare International Airport.
A copy of the order, which was provided by the law firm, indicates
that attorneys want all wood, nails, braces and other material used in
the construction of the porch to be protected in an indoor location.
It also sought protection for all building records and photographs
taken of the scene.
Mark Fenster
[snip]
>
> This raises a question in my mind, though. If, in fact, the porch was
> constructed shoddily, *but* it was so overloaded with people that it would have
> collapsed even with benefit of the best possible construction, would the shoddy
> construction then become irrelevant? Or would the fault be basically "shared"
> between the parties at fault for the construction and the parties responsible
> for the overloading, since both of those parties were contributing to what
> would have been an unavoidable event at some point? It seems that either party
> could argue that the tragedy would have eventually happened given the actions
> of the other party. Assuming such an argument ever got to court (meaning it
> wasn't settled out of court), I wonder what decision would be reached.
IBegg2Differ,
Another (and different) take on the legal liability question...
Landlords act on porches
Signs, lease rules and safety checks
By John Handley
Tribune staff reporter
Published July 3, 2003
As the 4th of July weekend approaches--with the promise of a multitude
of parties--Chicago landlords are taking steps to avert another porch
collapse.
Among their actions: erecting warning signs, checking porches for
safety, and considering new lease clauses to regulate how back porches
are used in light of Sunday's tragedy, in which 13 people died in the
collapse of an overloaded back porch in Lincoln Park.
"We're posting signs on all the porches of our more than 100 buildings
in the city, telling tenants that porches are not for people to
congregate," said Robert Levin, president of Wolin-Levin Inc., a
Chicago-based residential property management firm.
"We're also considering putting that in leases as a rule of the
building," Levin said. "Our resident property managers are checking
all porches. If needed, experts will be called in."
He noted, though, that people are going to have parties. "There is no
way that landlords or owners can monitor all porches to prevent big
parties."
Indeed, the only thing landlords can do is to have a structural
engineer check their porches to see if they comply with city codes and
are stable, said Robert A. Boron, a Chicago attorney specializing in
landlord and tenant law. Boron said that liability in porch disasters
is a complex question, but in the case of the collapse at 713 W.
Wrightwood Ave. "there is dangerous exposure for a lot of people."
He said that the owners may have liability if they allowed the
abuse--too many people on the porch--to go on. The tenants who allowed
so many on the porch also might be liable.
Harry Perl, an owner of Goldberg & Perl, a Chicago real estate sales
and management firm, called the porch tragedy "a landlord's
nightmare."
"We're contacting our tenants and letting them know that porches were
not designed for parties. You can't put the weight of three cars on a
porch," he said.
Perl added that signs will be posted, similar to the warnings in
elevators, limiting each porch to five people or 1,000 pounds. His
firm manages more than 125 units.
He added: "It's like the Titanic. After a tragedy, people are smarter
and wiser."
Dean Ivkovich, project administrator at the Porch People, a Chicago
firm, anticipates an increasing number of requests for porch
replacements.
Replacing a back porch on a three-story building costs $22,000 to
$50,000, depending on the length, and typically takes a week for a
six-man crew.
Ivkovich estimates that the average age of apartment buildings in
Chicago is 60 to 90 years. "By now, they're probably on their second
or third back porch. Porches should last 30 years or more," he said.
Breelyn Pete, a spokeswomanfor the city's Department of Buildings,
said residents should call 311 for a porch inspection. "We'll get
inspectors out within three days" she said.
In the meantime, people can check out their own porches.
Don Nelson of Northbrook-based Nelson & Son Building Inspections Ltd.
advised starting from the bottom and inspecting the foundations of the
vertical wood supports, which should be a minimum of 6 by 6 inches.
Nelson pointed out that a single beam will not reach to the third
floor, so the wood has to be notched and the parts overlaying 2 feet
and bolted together, not nailed.
"Walk up the stairs, which are more subject to rot than other parts,"
Nelson said.
He noted that the horizontal beams in the average porch are probably 6
by 6 inches, but the size depends on the length of the porch.
Kenpangborn
>Newsgroups: alt.true-crime
>
>Ivkovich estimates that the average age of apartment buildings in
>Chicago is 60 to 90 years. "By now, they're probably on their second
>or third back porch. Porches should last 30 years or more," he said.
Oh golly!!! I said that most of the buildings in that area were built in the
late 1920's based on having been born in that area of Chicago. I was called a
"LIAR!" One CLOWN even said that they were built in the early 1800's. (Chicago
Fire)
I so LOVE the various appearances of David Moore.
Mark Fenster
Gentlepeople,
I used to live in Chicago. I lived in Rogers Park, not Lincoln Park
(I couldn't afford Lincoln Park rents). No matter, every apartment in
my building (there were 18 units) had an old wooden back porch. I
lived on the second floor. I never gave any thought to the porch
collapsing. Additionally, I could add my upstairs neighbor didn't
throw any parties where a large number of people congregated on the
porch...
It was an old building that has since been torn down and turned into a
small parking lot.
Below, one additional article concerning new laws, changes in the
building code, etc., that may come out of this incident...
Fenster
***************************************************
Back porches face new scrutiny
The tragedy in Lincoln Park has many taking a closer look at the
familiar wooden structures that have long been a signature part of the
city
By Robert L. Kaiser, Tribune staff reporter. Tribune staff reporter
Joshua S. Howes contributed to this report
Published July 6, 2003
They're everywhere, this city's answer to the stoops, verandas,
rooftops and piazzas.
But not until the other day, as she was riding the elevated train to a
party in Old Town, did Mari Bakken notice them, really notice
them--all those back porches and stairs made of wood. See how they
climb and crisscross the backs of apartment buildings all over the
city.
"We said, `Look at all those old, rickety balconies,'" Bakken said.
"So many of them looked like they were about ready to collapse."
Like many other Chicagoans who kicked off the 4th of July weekend by
partying on back porches, Bakken did so with a new awareness of an old
thing.
The city's vast and elaborate network of wooden back porches has been
around almost 100 years, figuring into the milieu as they do in no
other American city--especially during Chicago's short summers. But a
chain-reaction porch collapse last weekend in Lincoln Park that left
13 people dead and more than 50 injured gave some holiday revelers
pause.
As Bakken stepped onto a wooden back porch Thursday evening for a
low-key 4th of July party with six friends in Old Town, she studied
the gray boards beneath her feet. As Luke Gerdes laughed with buddies
on a back porch several blocks away in Lincoln Park, he couldn't help
noticing how poorly the porch on the neighboring building seemed to be
built--Look at that. What's keeping it up?
And, as Justina Stobnicki arrived at a party after visiting the site
of the collapse to pay homage to the dead--one was a friend of her
aunt--she noted how many people were on the porch and whether it
seemed sturdy.
These are strange days for the city's wooden back porches. Suddenly
they figure in a tragedy after having so long served mostly as
platforms for the mundane; back porches are stages where private lives
play out in public, hair down and shirts off, where sociologists might
glimpse the ordinary behavior of Chicagoans.
`A tradition in Chicago'
"In Chicago there is a culture of the porch," said the renowned
Chicago architect Stanley Tigerman, who slept on one when he was a
youngster to keep cool--despite the "L" trains rumbling past less than
40 feet away.
"It's a tradition in Chicago, and all you have to do is ride the
elevated to see it," he said. "They're in black communities, in white
communities, in pink communities."
There's a reason for that, said Staci Larock as she sat on a wooden
back porch with Bakken and other friends.
"This," she said, "is the yard you get in the city."
Though other urban areas also have wooden back porches, nowhere else
do they predominate or figure into the milieu as they do in Chicago,
said Tim Samuelson, a cultural historian with the Chicago Department
of Cultural Affairs.
The collapse in Lincoln Park will not change that, Tigerman said,
though he expects the tragedy to bring about new regulations governing
back porches.
"The culture will not fade. The back porch is a place to have a party
on a summer night, a fabulous, wonderful place," he said.
"It's a great tradition, but it was never intended to be wall-to-wall
people."
Small parties are OK
Though city officials have stressed in the days after the Lincoln Park
collapse that porches are not for parties, a senior official said that
a properly designed, full-size porch can handle 12 people safely.
Gary Kass, who owns a building two doors from where the porches
collapsed, said he is at a loss about how to enforce capacity limits.
"How do you tell people that they can't use an amenity that has been
put there for them?" Kass said. "I would encourage the city to launch
a public relations campaign that says to these young people, `Think
what you are doing.' I just hope the city doesn't overreact because 75
percent of the issue here was just common sense."
Kass said he and other property owners are looking at their porch and
deck systems to gauge how sturdy they are. Owners and managers are
also questioning tenants about the frequency of crowded porch parties.
Kass is consulting attorneys about how to change the wording of his
leases to protect him from legal liability when a swarm of people
crowds onto a porch obviously not built to hold all of them.
Porch considered an asset
Having a porch on an apartment generally can make it rent more quickly
and can even add as much as $50 a month to the rent, said Robert
Laczi, owner of The Apartment Connection, an apartment brokerage
service in Lincoln Park. He doesn't see any signs suggesting that will
change.
"I think a lot of people just get tired of the city life, and sitting
out on the back porch is their way of reminiscing and getting away
from the city, even though they're still in the city," Laczi said.
Porches come in all shapes and sizes. Some are brown and some are
gray. "Every can of battleship-gray paint left over from World War II
went to paint them at one point," said William Lavicka, a Chicago
builder, preservationist and structural engineer. Most of the newer
ones are made of treated southern pine, which can prevent rot for
decades. And they can be found on everything from old, brick,
three-flat apartment houses to new condo buildings.
"You have a kind of momentum of history and expectation there, where
people kind of expect there to be a back porch," said Perry Duis, an
urbanologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
That many Chicagoans leave the air-conditioning of their homes to sit
in the heat on their back porches is ironic given the origin of the
structures. The first porches, built between 1900 and 1930 as a refuge
from the sweltering summer heat of apartments, served primarily as
secondary entrances and exits like fire escapes--and sometimes, on
especially hot nights, as a place for sweaty tenants to sit or sleep.
"I think, for a lot of families, it's a tradition coming out of
working-class Chicago, as an escape in the summertime to get out of
the heat of the apartment buildings, which didn't have
air-conditioning," Duis said.
"The alternatives that you had were to go sleep in the park or sleep
on the sidewalk."
Slowly, back porches evolved into something more.
Yuppies brought parties
"It was always a place for service, a place to put the garbage,"
Tigerman said. "But, then, in later times, those same buildings, when
they became yuppified, it was a great place for parties."
Riding the "L" is a good way to see many of Chicago's back porches,
Duis said. "Some people use them for storage, some have found various
ways to enclose them. You find almost everything," he said.
"You can find expressions of individuality in the way people treat
their porches," Duis said. "What's always amazed me about Chicago is
the use of wood, compared to New York, where there seem to be a lot of
metal fire escapes and back porches and so forth. Chicago was just
always much more of a wooden city."
Encouraging the building of so many back porches in Chicago is the
city's network of relatively wide alleys, which isn't found to such an
extent on the East Coast, Tigerman said. The timing of Chicago's
growth, with many of its neighborhoods sprouting up between 1900 and
1930, also contributed to the predominance of back porches, Samuelson
said. That was the heyday of multiunit, brick apartment
buildings--most notably the three-flat.
"When the neighborhoods started to expand and the "L" lines brought
many of the outlying neighborhoods closer to the central city, the
demand for multifamily housing really took hold. And that's when you
started seeing the types of buildings that have the big back porches
that we know today," Samuelson said.
Laws created back porches
Lavicka said the city's building codes and zoning laws, with their
exit and setback requirements, helped create the omnipresent back
porch.
"It sort of discouraged you from building a front porch," he said,
"because you were supposed to have a certain setback from the property
line. If you build a front porch, you've got to set the building back
further, and then you lose the back yard."
Samuelson said: "Chicago isn't the only place where you have exterior
back porches. But, certainly, given the predominance of buildings in
Chicago that date from the early 20th Century, you do have them as a
very characteristic feature of Chicago neighborhoods, perhaps more
noticeable here than you would find in other places.
"If you walk down an alley you will have kind of an alley streetscape
of porch after porch after porch. I think that kind of continuity is
unusual."
"It's bizarre," said Andrea Zujko, a partygoer on Jim Dries' back
porch in Lincoln Park who used to live in New York. "It's unusual to
have your fire escapes made out of wood.
"In New York, if anything, you party on a roof or on a balcony or
terrace. This whole network of wood back porches doesn't exist."
"Here when you say porch, people's thoughts immediately go to the back
of the building," Duis said. "It's what the front stoop is in other
parts of the country. You can call across to your neighbor.
"I don't think it ever will be part of the past. When you do have
tragedies like what happened recently, it demonstrates the need for
caution and even for rethinking how these porches are used and how
they're built.
"In the case of using the older porches from the 1920s that were more
passive for recreational use, then you have to start thinking about
the ability of that structure to take the load and use safely.
"There's always lessons that are learned."
Along with all their other uses, Chicago's back porches are bridges
across history. Both Lavicka, who's 58, and Zujko, who's in her 20s,
have used and enjoyed them--one to get away from summertime heat, the
other to embrace it after a long winter.
"Before air-conditioning, it's air-conditioning," Lavicka said. "You'd
just sit in the summertime and get a nice breeze. You're up in the
air. They got that song, `Up on the Roof'? You can sort of apply that
to the back porch."
At a back-porch party Thursday night, Zujko fanned her face with her
hand.
"It's hot out here," she said.
Mark Fenster
> > >From: Fenster_2...@hotmail.com (Mark Fenster)
> > >Newsgroups: alt.true-crime
>
> > >
> > >Ivkovich estimates that the average age of apartment buildings in
> > >Chicago is 60 to 90 years. "By now, they're probably on their second
> > >or third back porch. Porches should last 30 years or more," he said.
> >
> >
> > Oh golly!!! I said that most of the buildings in that area were built in the
> > late 1920's based on having been born in that area of Chicago. I was called a
> > "LIAR!" One CLOWN even said that they were built in the early 1800's. (Chicago
> > Fire)
>
Eight days after the incident, here come the lawsuits...more lawsuits
are expected...
Suits filed in fatal porch collapse
By Mickey Ciokajlo and David Heinzmann
Tribune staff reporters
Published July 7, 2003, 1:22 PM CDT
One lawsuit contending wrongful death, and another accusing city
officials of improperly removing debris from the accident scene, were
filed today in connection with last week's porch collapse that killed
13 people at a Lincoln Park apartment building.
The wrongful death suit was filed in Cook County Circuit Court by
attorneys representing the family of Kelly McKinnell, 26, of Chicago,
who was killed June 29 when the porch gave way during a party at 713
W. Wrightwood Ave.
Named as defendants were L.G. Properties Co., owner of the building;
company owner Philip J. Pappas and Restoration Specialists LLC.
The suit accused the defendants of building the porch out of joists
smaller than required by city code, setting them too far apart,
constructing an "entertainment porch" too large to be safely
supported, improperly attaching it to the building and doing the work
without proper city permits.
The plaintiff is Jean Ware, McKinnell's mother. She is represented by
Corboy & Demetrio, a Chicago personal-injury law firm. Last Friday,
the firm's attorneys obtained an emergency order from a Cook County
judge requiring city officials to preserve debris and other evidence
collected from the disaster scene.
The other suit filed today was on behalf of David Dermejian, a
23-year-old Chicago man who survived the porch collapse with injuries.
Besides naming as defendants Pappas, L.G. Properties and building
manager Jack Emery, the suit named the City of Chicago for allegedly
improperly removing porch debris.
Chicago lawyer Robert Clifford, who is representing Dermejian, said he
wanted to learn more about past city inspections that he called
"fishy." He asked, "How can you inspect a property five times and not
know there was a porch that hasn't been inspected?"
A spokeswoman for the city's Law Department previously said the debris
was hauled away because it was in the middle of two occupied apartment
buildings. It is being stored in a hangar at O'Hare International
Airport.
Both suits seek unspecified monetary damages. They were the second and
third filed in connection with the tragedy.
Last week, the city sued Pappas and his porch contractor, George
Koutroumbis, accusing them of illegally erecting a 3-story porch using
2-by-8-inch floor joists rather than the sturdier 2-by-10-inch joists
required by city code.
The city also alleged the 11-by-21-foot porch was a foot wider than
the maximum allowed under the code and exceeded a limit of 150 square
feet per floor by more than 50 percent. The structured splintered and
buckled under the weight of at least 114 people who were packed onto
the porch, according to city officials.
City lawyers also cited Pappas for converting the Wrightwood Avenue
building from five units to three in 2000, in addition to charging
that the porch was built without permits in 1998. The city is seeking
fines of up to $500 for each day since the illegal work was done,
which could result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in penalties.
Pappas has said he was cooperating with the city's investigation and
had hired professionals to analyze the porch collapse.
Kenpangborn
>Newsgroups: alt.true-crime
>Eight days after the incident, here come the lawsuits...more lawsuits are
expected...
Of course. What have we learned since the incident?
1. The porch was done in the last few years.
2. It was constructed without a proper permit.
3. It was expanded with insufficient engineering.
4. It was inappropriately attached to the building.
Hope the building owner had shitloads of insurance!
>The suit accused the defendants of building the porch out of joists
>smaller than required by city code, setting them too far apart,
>constructing an "entertainment porch" too large to be safely
>supported, improperly attaching it to the building and doing the work
>without proper city permits.
>
All of which seem to be born out by the city's investigation.