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The Walls Are a Tumblin‚Äö?Ñ?¥ Down08-10-07 | News

The Walls Are a Tumblin?EUR??,,????'??? Down




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Hundreds of people were evacuated from a 288-unit apartment building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan when a retaining wall collapsed July 25, 2007.


Landscape architects know how critical it is to have properly engineering retaining walls. Still, structural engineers apparently don?EUR??,,????'???t have all the answers.

A retaining wall at a construction site in Manhattan’s Upper West Side collapsed July 25, 2007, forcing hundreds of residents of a 16-floor, 288 apartment unit building to evacuate. The building is part of Park West Village built in the 1950s and 1960s. The residential building includes park space, schools and churches.

Residents of all but 16 of the apartments were allowed to return to their homes. Part of the apartment building’s foundation is now exposed.

A foundation contractor was working to stabilize the wall before the collpase. Blasting work at the construction site may have caused the wall to topple, but authorities are investigating.

N.Y. is no stranger to collapsing retaining walls. On May 12, 2005, a 300 by 100-foot section of a retaining wall along the Hudson River in Washington Heights collapsed, sending dirt and rocks onto Riverside Drive and the northbound lanes of the Henry Hudson Parkway.

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