On Wednesday, June 12th, 52-year-old Ronald Wagenhoffer, a veteran building inspector with the City of Philadelphia, was reportedly found dead in his truck with a gunshot wound to the chest area. Our building collapse injury attorneys note that news accounts of the tragedy called the gunshot wound self-inflicted. (Source: Associated Press by way of Fox News, 6/13/13)
Mr. Wagenhoffer had apparently been with the City’s Department of Public Property for 16 years and had worked his way up to the rank of building inspector. According to reports, Ronald Wagenhoffer had looked at the collapsed Market Street building several weeks before it fell. He had signed off on the order to demolish the building. When the building collapsed during shoddy demolition work, it fell into the adjacent Salvation Army Thrift Store killing 6 innocent shoppers and employees and injuring 13 more people.
Apparently citizens had been complaining about the building, which led ultimately to the demolition. Whether those complaints were due to safety or some other reason was unclear to our building collapse injury attorneys. While there seem to have been a lot of safety failures all around that led to the Market Street building collapse, it doesn’t appear that Mr. Wagenhoffer himself had done anything wrong.
Two Philadelphia Demolition Projects Gone Wrong
The City’s Department of Licensing and Inspection (L&I) has been saying that the Market Street building was structurally sound and not in danger of collapse prior to the demolition. L&I seems to be taking pains to contrast the fatal Market Street demolition disaster with the shoddy demolition done work some months earlier at Elena’s Soul Lounge where demolition workers also caused the building’s walls to collapse onto adjacent buildings.
The main contrast with the Market Street tragedy actually seems to be that Elena’s was being demolished because it had burned and become unstable, and so the adjacent buildings were evacuated at the time Elena’s collapsed onto them. The building collapse injury attorneys at Denena Points, PC emphasize that the City, after permitting shoddy demolition work to destroy Elena’s neighboring buildings, then reportedly gave those building owners 30 days to repair or tear down their structures. Adding insult to injury. But in those cases, not fatal injury, fortunately.
So what exactly is going on in the City of Philadelphia? And is it really much different from what is going on in other cities?
Current L&I procedures apparently do not require demolition contractors to demonstrate any real qualifications for the job; demolition workers are not screened or backgrounded; and dangerously unsafe demolition practices are routine.
Perhaps Ronald Wagenhoffer could have clarified some of the safety and procedures failures that led to the Market Street building collapse. Now we will never know. And Griffin Campbell, the demolition contractor described as having a criminal record but little or no demolitions qualifications, and Richard Basciano, the “porn king” building owner, do not seem to be drawing much blame for the deadly Market Street building collapse. Only Sean Benschop, the equipment operation who was allegedly “high” on marijuana at the time had been charged for the deadly demolition disaster. Click the link to read more about the true tragedy of the Market Street building collapse.