116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
3 bodies found in Davenport building collapse
Lawsuits say negligence led to the apartment building’s failure
DAVENPORT — The remains of all three men caught inside the Davenport apartment building that partially collapsed last week have been recovered, the city’s police chief said Monday, as survivors began filing lawsuits asserting that negligence led to the structural failure.
“We don’t have any other information at this time that there are any additional people missing,” Chief Jeff Bladel said at a news conference.
The police chief said Branden Colvin Sr., 42, was recovered Saturday. Ryan Hitchcock, 51, was recovered Sunday and Daniel Prien, 60, was recovered early Monday. He did not say if they died immediately after the May 28 collapse, but autopsies will be performed on all three.
Officials rescued seven people immediately after the collapse, escorted another dozen out of the building and rescued another person from the rubble with an on-site amputation. But less than 12 hours after the collapse, officials said they had no credible information that anyone had died in the collapse, and ordered the "immediate demolition" of the unstable building.
The comments drew community backlash from families and friends of those who were still missing and others, who urged the city to continue searching. Then, hours later on March 29, another person, Lisa Brooks, was rescued from a fourth-story window.
Rescue and recovery efforts continued after the city activated a state rescue task force based in Cedar Rapids. Iowa Task Force 1 Urban Search and Rescue Chief Rick Halleran said during the news conference Monday the recoveries brought some closure to the men’s families over the weekend.
"As we come into today's operations, following the goals and objectives by the command staff of the city and the incident management team, in all hopes, it looks like we'll be wrapping things up shortly," Halleran said. "That being said, they are still working, things are dynamic, and they still can be changing. The hope is that we will be entering a new chapter, a new phase in the process of working through the aftermath of the collapse."
Davenport officials said they were consulting with experts about how to safely bring down the rest of the structure. The city fire marshal earlier said explosives would not be used because it’s close to other buildings in a busy part of downtown Davenport.
Mayor Mike Matson said Monday that neither he nor other city officials have been in touch with building owner Andrew Wold since the collapse. County records show Wold’s Davenport Hotel L.L.C. acquired the building in a 2021 deal worth $4.2 million.
Wold released a statement dated May 30 saying “our thoughts and prayers are with our tenants.” He has made no statement since then.
Bladel said the Davenport fire marshal’s office had begun an investigation of the building collapse with help from the state Division of Criminal Investigation, Davenport police and the medical examiner’s office. Last week, Scott County prosecutor Kelly Cunningham cautioned against assuming a criminal prosecution is appropriate, saying an independent investigation needs to be conducted into the cause of the building’s structural failure.
Unresolved questions include why neither the owner nor city officials warned residents about potential danger. A structural engineer’s report issued days before the collapse indicated a wall of the century-old building was at imminent risk of crumbling.
A recording of a 911 call placed just the day before the partial collapse revealed the director of an organization affiliated with the chamber of commerce reported a contractor's concerns about a wall's integrity. City fire officials responded by visiting the site for less than 5 minutes, a log shows.
Residents have started filing lawsuits.
Dayna Feuerbach escaped her fifth-floor apartment during the collapse with just her purse. Everything else she kept in her home of 20 years was gone.
Feuerbach filed a lawsuit Monday against Wold and others. One of her attorneys is Jeffrey Goodman of the Philadelphia-based firm of Saltz Mongeluzzi Bendesky, who specializes in structural collapse cases and represented victims in 2021 Surfside condominium collapse in Florida. That litigation ultimately settled for $1.2 billion.
The complaint names Wold, Davenport Hotel LLC, Andrew Wold Investments LLC, Select Structural Engineering LLC, Bi-State Masonry Inc., the city of Davenport, Waukee Investments I LLC and Parkwild Properties LC as defendants.
The court filing states that Feuerbach has suffered injuries to her physical, psychological and emotional well-being, including head trauma, that are “permanent in nature.” Goodman said Feuerbach "is still recovering from the collapse and will not be doing any media interviews."
But Feuerbach spoke with the Quad-City Times in the days after the collapse.
“When it first happened, I don't know, I didn't realize the finality of it,” Feuerbach said then. “I guess I thought, well, this is awful, but somehow there'll be repairs and we'll go on living back in the building. But then we realized pretty soon that that was it, that the building was going to be coming down, but we'd never get back in again and we’d lose everything, and, boy, that realization was awful.”
A news release from the law firm asserted "the owner and the City of Davenport’s inspectors were warned on May 24, 2023 that the building appeared 'ready to fall imminently.'"
“This disaster in Davenport was a preventable tragedy; all the victims and their families are in our hearts, and they all deserve justice," Goodman said. "This lawsuit is the first step towards seeking justice and answers on behalf of the victims."
Another lawsuit, filed Friday in Scott County, identifies plaintiff Mildred Harrington as a resident of the building and plaintiff Rijeh Garnett as a resident of a nearby building that the suit says was impacted. Davenport Hotel LLC is the defendant.
The suit accuses Davenport Hotel LLC of failing in its responsibility to the plaintiffs, including failing to maintain the building in a reasonably safe condition and failing to warn residents of structural concerns.
There potentially could be more plaintiffs in the suit, according to court records. The complaint describes Harrington and Garnett as representative of larger classes of people impacted by the collapse. But a judge would have to authorize it as class-action suit.
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds toured the site Monday morning, and tweeted later that the state is providing support and resources while working with city officials. “Thank you to the first responders for putting their lives at risk to help their community,” she wrote.
The building, built as a hotel in 1907, had been converted into about 80 apartment units that were home to roughly 50 people. The state earlier made $5,000 available to displaced tenants who met income requirements, and the city offered $6,000 to the people forced from their homes.
On Monday, the governor also waived the fees for tenants who needed to get their driver’s license replaced.
Sarah Watson, Tom Loewy, Brooklyn Draisey and Anthony Watt of the Quad City Times contributed to this report.
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