The New York City Department of Buildings is cracking down on unsafe parking structures following a fatal collapse in Manhattan.
Building officials have ordered four parking structures to close and vacate immediately after finding safety concerns.
News 12 was told this will also give building owners time to make necessary repairs.
The DOB released a statement that said in part, “This work was done in the interest of public safety, and out of an abundance of caution. During our sweep of 78 parking structures, we found four locations where structural concerns necessitated areas of the buildings to be immediately vacated."
Underneath the 25-story building in lower Manhattan, inspectors found concrete slabs “extensively corroded, with spalled concrete on the underside of two-floor slab ceilings.” As a result, more than half of the garage is now off-limits and its operators ordered to provide protected pathways in those places.
But engineers found no need to vacate any residential areas of the building.
Similarly, building officials said residents could stay put in a Chinatown apartment building despite finding “numerous severely deteriorated and rusted steel beams, with excessive cracked and spalling concrete piers.”
A two-story parking structure in Brooklyn was in such disrepair, the city said, that it ordered the shuttering of the entire structure. Another two-story structure in the borough was partially closed because of extensively corroded beams and deteriorated vehicle ramps.
The four buildings can’t reopen until repairs are made and pass inspection.
AP Wire Services were used in the report.