Fire chief: 1 person rescued overnight from Iowa building collapse; No deaths reported

DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) — One person was found overnight at the site of a collapsed apartment building in Iowa, bringing the total number of people rescued to eight, authorities said Monday.

Davenport Fire Chief Michael Carlsten said at a news conference Monday that it was unclear if anyone was still missing after part of the six-story complex crashed to the ground in the eastern Iowa city. No deaths have been reported.

“No known individuals are trapped in that facility,” Carlsten said. Authorities have not released how many people were injured or provided details on the nature of their injuries. Carlsten did say that the person who was rescued overnight was in the hospital.

Rescue teams, including K-9 units, were inside the building all night.

“When something like this happens here, and tragedy strikes, our responders immediately do their work and their job and I can’t thank them enough,” Davenport Mayor Mike Matson said.

Rescuers were called to the scene shortly before 5 p.m. Sunday. Fire crews rescued seven people and escorted more than a dozen others from the building in their initial response.

Earlier, Carlsten said the back of the apartment complex collapsed and had separated from the building, which houses apartments on the upper floors and businesses on the ground level.

Authorities found a gas leak after the collapse, Carlsten said, while water also had leaked throughout the floors of the structure.

The stability of the building was still a concern.

Carlsten said officials were “currently finishing the rescue phase of our operation and soon it will become a recovery operations.”

The cause of the collapse was not immediately known.

Rich Oswald, City of Davenport director of development and neighborhood services, said Sunday that work was being done on the building’s exterior at the time of the collapse.

Reports of bricks falling from the building earlier this week were part of that work and the building’s owner had a permit for the project, Oswald said.

They also said they were still trying to determine if there were any missing people associated with the building. The mayor said some residents didn’t have cellphones or a second way of reaching them.

There were 84 units in the building, a mixture of residential and commercial spaces, the mayor said.

Nearly 20 permits were filed in 2022 for building repairs, mainly for plumbing or electrical issues, according to the county assessor’s office.

In June 2021, 98 people died when a high-rise condominium near Miami Beach collapsed in the middle of the night.

The Champlain Towers South had a long history of maintenance problems, and shoddy construction techniques were used in the early 1980s. Other possible factors for the collapse include sea level rise caused by climate change and damage caused by saltwater intrusion.