It was a scene out of a movie when a section of a Morris Heights building crashed down last December.
The Department of Buildings is taking action to prevent catastrophic collapses like the one at 1915 Billingsley Terrace from happening again.
The collapse happened within 3 ½ minutes of support bricks being removed from the building.
"That's all it took. By the time they heard the snap, which was the buckle of that pier and the corner of Billingsley coming down, 3 1/2 minutes, that's how egregious of a mistake this was," said Department of Buildings Commissioner Jimmy Oddo.
An inspection report done by the DOB says human error is to blame. Report plans from the buildings engineer misidentified a critical support beam as decorative and the contractor failed to question those plans.
On the day of the collapse, video surveillance shows contractors working on the building, removing critical support bricks minutes before it toppled down.
"It wasn't just one mistake, it wasn't just two mistakes, it wasn't just the engineer, it was the contractor also, making that first critical misdiagnosis of that corner pier," said Yegal Shamash, deputy commissioner of Enforcement for the Department of Buildings.
The city suspended the license of engineer Richard Koenigsberg for two years. The contractor, Arsch Landmark General Construction, was slapped with fines.
With 1.1 million buildings in New York City and 450 inspectors, the DOB says it's impossible to have eyes on them all. A newly passed law in the building's name and $4.7 million in funding are helping to staff a new enforcement unit that will use predictive analytics to aid in prevention.
"The analytics and the data we have can hone in and really allow this new inspections team to look at bad owners," said Shamash.
The 60-person team will be compromised of data analysts, inspectors and lawyers and is anticipated to launch in 2025.
The landlord has submitted new plans to rebuild the portion of the building. The DOB says it is combing through those plans that will be completed with a new engineer and contract team.
