DEADLY COLLAPSE
House collapse kills mother who may have saved her daughter’s life during tragedy >>
HAMILTON » A “pancakestyle” home collapse killed a mother and injured her two daughters who were rescued from the rubble early Monday morning in the township.
Officials said at a Monday news conference they believed only three people were inside the home when it collapsed, but “secondary searches” were being conducted to confirm no one remained trapped in voids of the heaping pile of debris that was once a threestory home. Heavy construction equipment was brought in to aid with the search and clean-up effort of the collapse, which happened shortly before 7 a.m. on the 1800 block of South Broad Street, near the Trenton border.
The crumbled 1804 South Broad Street residence was one of several rental homes on the same block owned by William “Bill” Pozniak.
Officials identified the woman killed in the collapse as 38-year-old Tika Justice, whose body was turned over to the Middlesex coroner to determine a cause of death.
Officials were withholding the names of her two daughters, 20 and 16, who were listed in serious but stable condition after being taken to Capital Health Regional Medical Center in Trenton.
Officials didn’t detail the extent of the injuries they suffered in the collapse.
“They’re dealing with a very traumatic incident,” Hamilton Police Chief James Stevens said.
Dozens of firefighters and police were called in to help rescue the residents who were all pulled from the rubble within about an hour and 40 minutes of the collapse, officials said. Search efforts stopped shortly before 10 a.m. as a search-and-rescue worker said the three victims had been pulled from the rubble.
A team of engineers and investigators from several agencies, including the state fire marhsal’s office and state police, was working to determine the cause of the collapse.
Justice was discovered in a second-story bedroom on top of her 16-year-old daughter, officials said, but they were unable to say if she had attempted to shield her daughter from falling debris.
Justice’s 20-year-old daughter was in another bedroom on the second floor when she heard “cracking” noises and started screaming moments before the home caved in on itself, Hamilton Fire Department Capt. Ferdinand Mather said.
The 20-year-old woman was discovered partially buried underneath rubble and had to be removed.
Neighbor James Feig arrived within minutes of the collapse and saw the woman, who was dressed in a blue shirt, buried in debris up to her chest. She was on the phone with emergency dispatchers as Feig attempted to keep her calm until help arrived.
“She must have had the phone in her hand when it happened,” he said.
Neighbor Janet Tooma,
who lives a block away on Lafayette Avenue, said she saw another victim wrapped in blankets on a stretcher being transported to the hospital sometime around 9:30 a.m.
She didn’t know the residents who lived at the home, which was purchased by Pozniak in June 2001. The property value of the 1,615-square-foot home, which was built in 1920, is assessed at $126,700.
The home was registered with the township as a rental property and had passed inspection in September 2013. It was given a certificate of occupancy, Yaede said, as no structural deficiencies were detected during the inspection.
Fire officials were called out to the home only once in the last 14 years, when a resident heard popping sounds coming from a back room,
Mather said, but an investigation didn’t turn up anything to suggest the home was structurally unsound.
The township mayor called the house collapse a tragedy.
Mather said investigators were still sorting through debris in hopes of pinpointing the cause, an effort that was expected to take some time.
“We start at the very beginning to see how the structure fell and start working our way back to figure out the weakest point and what made it fall down,” he said.
None of the residents in the neighborhood heard explosions or noises before the collapse or saw any signs of problems with the building.
No evacuation was ordered of nearby homes, implying that there was not
any danger to area residents.
Authorities still closed down and cordoned off streets in the surrounding area. And PSE&G shut off the gas to the home and at the curb around 7:30 a.m. as a safety precaution, a spokesperson said. Residents reported smelling gas in the area but a PSE&G spokesperson and officials confirmed it didn’t appear gas played a role in the building collapse.
“Our experts can look at damage and know in terms of the way the house fell whether it was an explosion or not,” PSE&G spokeswoman Lauren Ugorji said.
Mather noted there were no signs the home had “exploded outward. No debris out into the street. Everything is compacted to the scene.”