Surfside Condo collapse structural engineer weighs-in on Davenport apartment collapse

DAVENPORT, Iowa (KCRG) - As about 50 people from Iowa’s specialized search and rescue group called “Iowa’s Task Force One” re-entered and researched the partially collapsed building Thursday into Friday. Searchers were from Sioux City and Cedar Rapids. This was their second search of the apartment building, but they didn’t find the three people still unaccounted for.

“It’s killing us,” said Desiree Banks, the mother of 2 of Branden’s children. “It’s breaking us apart.”

Branden Colvin, Ryan Hitchcock, and Daniel Prien were unaccounted for. Colvin and Hitchcock were believed to be inside the building. City leaders said they were working with organizations to locate Prien.

“We’re trying to stay as strong as we can; I don’t have a choice,” she said. “It wasn’t just us, it was the whole situation, it’s everybody.”

Allyn Kilsheimer, the structural engineer who led the investigation into the Surfside Condo collapse that killed 98 people in Florida, he said Davenport probably did the right thing in balancing the safety of the first responders and the people who were trapped under the rubble. He said if the building had fully collapsed while first responders were in the building, the tragic situation would have been worse. He also said shoring up the building and leaving the debris in place allowed investigators to find out what caused the collapse. Kilsheimer also said an outside party needs to investigate immediately. For now, the concern for Desiree and so many people who know the three-missing people is to find out what happened to them.

“Are they alive, are they safe, they’re not safe, so we have to make them safe,” said Banks.

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