Downtown Cedar Rapids building collapsed more than 100 years ago

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KCRG) - Monday is the fifth day first responders are searching for people after a building in the Miami area collapsed.

Investigators said it remains a search and rescue operation, but no one has been found alive since just hours after the collapse on Thursday. 11 people are confirmed dead and more than 150 others are still missing.

A similar collapse happened in Cedar Rapids 108 years ago. It happened to the same downtown building, where bricks fell in July 2020. In 1913, the Lyman Building’s back wall collapsed. The Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette reported, then, eight men were underneath. It took about a week to pull out the last body from the debris.

Mark Stoffer Hunter said collapses like this were more common back then.

“Many of them involved lots of people involved such as theatres and hotels where there were fires, roof collapses and wall collapses,” Stoffer Hunter said.

The Lyman building collapsed because it used poured concrete. And the contractor didn’t give it enough time to settle. The building was then re-branded as the Iowa Building.

Copyright 2021 KCRG. All rights reserved.