116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
6 months after Davenport collapse: What we've learned
Three men killed when downtown building failed on Memorial Day weekend
DAVENPORT — The Sunday of Memorial Day weekend in Davenport started as a pretty good day.
The morning of May 28 saw the temperatures reach a low of 48 degrees, but the day steadily warmed to 84. It was sunny and the blue sky was dotted by fluffy white clouds.
By 3:30 p.m., the Quad-City River Bandits had just finished beating the Beloit Sky Carp, 10-3. It was the Bandits’ 12th straight win. Some of those who attended the baseball game stayed downtown to grab a bite or drink or to just enjoy the pleasant day.
That Memorial Day weekend, others gathered in pubs, like Tim Shomaker, who enjoyed Sunday with a drink at The Spot, a newly opened bar at 226 W. Third St.
Inside a six-story apartment building at 324 Main St. called The Davenport, most of the tenants were out. Some were shopping. Others were visiting friends and family. Those who remained inside were enjoying the long weekend.
Lexus and Quanishia “Peach” Berry were relaxing there in their fourth-floor apartment. A crack had appeared above their bathroom doorway the day before. It was larger that Sunday, and the doorway started to separate from the wall.
Lexus snapped a picture. Both women knew something was wrong.
While the Berrys worried about the wall in their apartment, Branden Colvin Sr. told family and friends he wanted to take a nap before attending a family cookout in Rock Island. He lay on the couch in his fourth-floor apartment.
Other tenants of The Davenport were doing mundane things that would loom large just minutes later. Robert Robinson walked down from his second-floor apartment to have a smoke outside. It was about 4:50 p.m.
Dayna Feuerbach heard distinct “rumbling” sounds in the building. At nearly the same time, Broc Nelson was in his apartment and he felt the building start to shake.
‘Everything else was gone’
Feuerbach, talking to the Quad-City Times a week after the collapse, said she heard “a huge crash, like something huge hit the building.” She walked out of her apartment and heard people screaming.
Robinson heard alarms sounding in the building, and tried to go up the stairwell. He found people fleeing. Nelson said he was “thrown around” his apartment and he started to choke on the dusty air. He escaped down a stairwell.
Lexus and Peach Berry felt the building shaking and tried to flee.
“We both grabbed our cats, she grabbed one, I grabbed one, got to the door,” Lexus Berry told the Quad-City Times in the days after the collapse. “I watched her (Peach), and everything just fell down and everything fell on top of me, and I barely made it out the door. … I got out, but there was nothing left, but where I was standing at. Everything else was gone. I took the stairwell to get out, but my wife is still in there; my cats are still there,” she said.
Peach Berry was rescued later, overnight, after her leg was amputated to free her.
At 4:55 p.m., the Davenport Fire Department received a call that a building had collapsed at 324 Main St.
Sitting in The Spot, Shomaker heard the sirens. After going outside, he saw people gathering around what he later learned was the apartment building. The west wall of the red brick building had collapsed. Shomaker did the first thing that came to his mind: He walked down the street with a pitcher of water and a stack of plastic cups.
“It’s hot out and people are having anxiety,” he said at the time, as he poured a cup for a man who lived inside the collapse apartment building.
Residents huddled together outside the building as the fire alarm blared. The alarm continued for days after that.
The portion of the wall that fell faced the building’s parking lot. Tow trucks arrived on scene shortly after the collapse and began moving cars to allow rescuers inside.
The cars were parked in a lot across the street and covered in dust from the building. One had “not accounted for” written in dust on the hood. On the windshield was the name Ryan Hitchcock, followed by two phone numbers. At the bottom of the window someone wrote, “He is in the building.”
The next evening, Hitchcock’s cousin was reached by a reporter. She said the family was able to track his iPhone to his apartment before it shut off. Hitchcock’s body was later recovered from the rubble — one of three people who died in the collapse.
As the night went on, the scene was illuminated by red and blue emergency lights. Around the corner, the doors of St. Anthony’s Catholic Church were open to everyone. The church became the headquarters of the American Red Cross where residents flocked, looking for answers and help.
Standing on the sidewalk were Jennifer Smith and Dionte McMath. The pair opened 4th Street Nutrition in December 2022 on the main floor of The Davenport, but had problems from the start.
“We never had heat,” Smith said. “We had four space heaters all winter. The fire department, who is our customer, they’ve come in several times and told us this is illegal to have all these space heaters. We didn’t have air, the bathrooms have caved in before and I have pictures, and in the hallway there has been water leaking into our business.”
Just after 10 p.m., MedForce arrived on scene, parking the emergency medical helicopter in the middle of Harrison Street. Just before 11:30 p.m., crews removed a white tarp from the back of a truck and wrapped it around the temporary fence surrounding the building visible from Harrison.
The tarp effectively blocked the view of reporters and bystanders, but Peach Berry later offered an insight on what was going on. Rescue teams were able to get inside the building via an access door and were performing the on-site amputation.
The city announced a news conference would be held at 7 a.m. the next morning. At the time, the city reported there was “no credible evidence” of anyone remaining inside and announced demolition plans. But just before 8 p.m. May 29 — one day after the partial collapse — Lisa Brooks was rescued from her apartment inside the building.
This triggered a string of protests and legal action.
Collapse leads to numerous lawsuits
Lexus and Peach Berry are among those suing a number of defendants in the wake of the collapse, seeking damages from those including building owner Andrew Wold, the city of Davenport, engineers and masonry contractors. Their attorneys said they would demand $50 million in damages from a jury.
The collapse of The Davenport resulted in numerous lawsuits, including wrongful death suits filed on behalf of the estates of building tenants Branden Colvin Sr., Daniel Prien and Ryan Hitchcock. Authorities recovered the bodies of the three men from the rubble.
The status of the lawsuits last week includes:
- There were eight lawsuits as of last Monday. Between them, they name more than a dozen defendants, including developer Wold, Davenport Hotel LLC and the city of Davenport.
- In total, the suits name about 20 plaintiffs. The other plaintiffs mostly were tenants of the building when it collapsed. The plaintiffs argue the defendants’ negligence resulted in or contributed to the collapse and the losses the plaintiffs experienced because of it.
- The various defendants have been responding to the allegations against them, seeking to have them dismissed or denying culpability.
- Wold has sued a fellow defendant in one of the cases. His allegations against Select Structural Engineering, a company that inspected the building in the months before the collapse, include negligence and breach of contract. He alleges its failures led to the collapse.
- Select has in turn sued Wold and Davenport Hotel LLC. Select argues it was Wold and the company’s negligence that caused the collapse.
- Scott County courts have begun a limited consolidation of the suits for purposes of consistency, and of streamlining pretrial processes like discovery. The suits could also become a class action.
- Attorneys for Jean Marie Vaval Jr. and Christina Ross, the plaintiffs in another collapse-related suit, had their suit dismissed. Court documents state they intend to refile but that had not occurred as of last Monday.
Davenport hires an investigation
In the wake of the collapse., the city hired two firms to investigate what occurred. White Birch Group LLC and SOCOTEC Engineering LLC produced a report for the city that detailed their findings. The city made the report public in September.
Here are some takeaways from the report:
- Though there were several circumstances that contributed to the wall’s failure, efforts to repair it in late May led to the collapse. Workers removed sections of brick from the wall without enough shoring in place to keep the wall stable. The report does not specifically identify who was conducting the work on the wall in the three days before the collapse, referring to them only as the “most recent masonry repair contractor.” The report’s authors stated they received no written documentation about the repair work carried out on May 26 or after. The investigation relied on security camera footage of the work done during that time.
- White Birch and SOCOTEC criticized Select Structural Engineering’s work during The Davenport project. In the report, authors argued the firm did not properly identify the wall as a critical structural component or provide enough detail in its construction documents. There was also not enough oversight to ensure workers carried out the project as prescribed.
- The report states that several years of improper repairs and lack of maintenance compromised the west wall’s integrity.
- SOCOTEC and White Birch did not evaluate Davenport city policy, stating such an evaluation was outside the scope of their investigation.
A series of warnings and violations
Complaints and city warnings and citations came frequently at The Davenport. The city’s inspection logs show it took 146 actions at the building in the past three years. That included an ordered emergency structural engineering report to be done on the building in February. Follow-up reports were completed in May.
The city did inspections for building permits, issued violations for problems such as no heat and overflowing garbage, and once, in 2020, threatened to close the building if violations weren’t corrected.
In the days before the collapse, two tenants complained of cracking walls and floors in their apartments. Both tenants moved out and terminated their leases because of structural issues they spotted. In the case of Trent Fuessel, he filed a complaint with the city, which it closed when he moved out eight days before the west wall — including his unit — fell.
Ryan Shaffer, the owner of a local masonry company, predicted the collapse months in advance. Shaffer said he was approached by building owner Wold in early 2023 to submit a bid for work to be done on the building.
Wold rejected the bid from Shaffer, saying it was too high, Shaffer said. Instead, Wold wanted to piece the bid out and have only half of the work done, Shaffer said. Shaffer said he refused, saying his way was the safest and most effective.
While working on a building nearby, Shaffer visited The Davenport the day before it fell. He brought his concerns to a worker on the site, who called a city development official. A call was placed to 911 at 2:46 p.m. May 27, reporting the building’s west wall was “bulging out.”
“Someone was there working on it and told him to get out of the way because it was not looking good. I don’t know if fire might want to stop by and see,” the caller told the dispatcher. “Just in case, I’d rather have someone stop and look at it.”
The Davenport Fire Department arrived on scene at 2:51 p.m. and left four minutes later. The department never responded to a request for comment.
DCI criminal investigation
A criminal investigation has been ongoing since the days following the collapse.
The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation was on the scene in the days following the collapse. Lead criminal investigator Ryan Kedley said in early September there were no new updates to share in the collapse investigation.
DCI has been working with the Davenport fire and police departments, as well as the Scott County Attorney’s Office, on reviewing and assessing information relevant to the investigation, Kedley said in July.
According to reporting from Radio Iowa, DCI agents were in Le Mars in mid-June on an “investigative follow-up” related to the collapse.
Kedley did not respond last week to questions about the status of the investigation.
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