You may be following the events of the Denton balcony collapse at The Grove Apartments. The third floor balcony sheared off the wall and dropped to the concrete below. The fall took three men to the concrete with the fallen balcony, where they suffered severe injuries. Our focus has been on the negligence of the various parties behind the scenes that led to the balcony collapse.
Another blogger, in Alabama, has been focused specifically on the business practices of Ted Rollins, the CEO of Campus Crest. Campus Crest built and owns The Grove. We think that the unsafe balconies and the somewhat callous, defensive comments of The Grove’s spokespersons in the aftermath of the balcony collapse speak to those business practices.
Interestingly, Anonymous (perhaps the same Anonymous that posted similar comments on Denton sites after the balcony collapse) made a comment on the Alabama blog piece focusing on The Grove apartments’ balcony collapse. Anonymous’s comment takes the position that the third floor doors leading out onto the collapsing balcony were designed as a safety feature, specifically as a “great emergency egress point.”
Indeed, if your idea of emergency egress involves shattering your body on the concrete three floors below. The blogger in Alabama clearly questions Anonymous’ ideas regarding safety features.
At Denena Points, PC, we’d looked up some of Texas’ and Denton’s provisions regarding safety and emergency egress. Neither entity requires a three-story drop off from your apartment onto a hard concrete landing in the event of an emergency. When things get bad enough that such an egress becomes a safety feature, perhaps balcony collapses will be the least of our worries.
Denton government entities have in fact discussed emergency egress and other safety issues at length over the years. They do not specifically speak to the idea of third floor exits onto collapsing balconies as a safety feature, but their comments generally would seem to suggest that they would agree that such an “emergency exit” would not be safe.
Negligence, and we believe gross negligence at that, lies at the root of The Grove balcony collapse in Denton. Denial after the fact does nothing to change the negligence that brought The Grove balcony collapse about. Imaginative attempts to characterize the third floor doors’ exit onto a collapsing balcony positioned above concrete as a “great emergency egress point” safety feature only seem to make light of the truly terrible injuries suffered by the three men who fell from that balcony.