CHARLESTON, W.Va. — City officials are vowing to act as quickly as possible and as safely as possible following the falling of bricks from the facade on an East End building on Monday.
Tony Harmon, the Building Code Official for the City of Charleston, said the vacant structure that is an old restaurant located on the corner of Washington and Elizabeth Streets is structurally unsound. City officials are now moving to tear the whole thing down in the next week.
Harmon said bricks fell overnight Sunday into Monday and the further investigation concluded it was because of water damage.
“After further investigation, we found that the roof had been leaking extensively all around the brick and going down in the facade and down into the walls inside the structure,” Harmon told 580-WCHS.
“Freezing and thawing after the water gets in there and broke loose a lot of the facade in the building. There is a lot of damage inside of the building along the perimeter too.”
Because of the potential danger and structure having to be torn down, there will be multiple road closures for the next week. Washington Street East is closed between Maxwell Street and Sydney Street and Elizabeth Street is closed between Lee Street and Jackson Street.
Harmon said the city is hoping to get an asbestos report back Monday evening, before starting any work.
“We’ll try to be the structure on the ground Wednesday or Thursday,” he said. “Once it’s on the ground, it becomes safe as far as falling objects and so forth. We’ll be able to open some roads back up and then we’ll haul the structure out.”
Harmon said the building had been vacant for “quite a while.” He said the roof was probably leaking for years and the damage finally caught up to the structure.
“It needs to be done and the building owner was there and agreed at the end of the day that the building needs to come down,” Harmon said.