Philadelphia City Manager Discusses Wide-Spread Building Collapses
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Want to take you now to the city of Philadelphia there. Officials fear that some 3,000 buildings could collapse at any time. Twenty-two row houses have fallen down since Thursday, and the most recent collapse happened last night. However, residents there not home at the time of that collapse. Most of the other problems have involved empty or abandoned buildings, all in poor neighborhood. Only minor injuries resulted from the collapses. More now from the telephone and Joseph Martz. He's the city manager in the city of Philadelphia. Sir, can you hear me?</s>JOSEPH MARTZ, PHILADELPHIA CITY MANAGER: I sure can, Bill.</s>HEMMER: Tell us what's happening right now with these row houses and what seems to be contributing to these collapses.</s>MARTZ: Well, all we can ascertain at this point is that there just seems to have -- it has seemed to have been an unusually wet summer here in the city of Philadelphia and we believe that the water has much to do with the problems that we're experiencing right now.</s>HEMMER: And I understand your answer there, but would it take more than just water to force houses to collapse? Is there not more of an issue here structurally?</s>MARTZ: Well, we recognize that. And, as a matter of fact, a year ago when Mayor Street was actually running for mayor, he -- his program at the time was that he would put $250 million into a blight program to help us eradicate some of the problems that exist right now. We actually have between 6,000 and 6,500 homes that are dangerous or imminently dangerous and need to be taken down.</s>HEMMER: For the people still living there inside, have they been warned, notified of possible danger to them inside?</s>MARTZ: For those homes, most of those homes are actually vacant. We actually have in the city of Philadelphia between 23,000 and 25,000 vacant properties. Today, as we speak, there are members of our Department of Licenses and Inspections in the air with our police department reviewing a number of the properties. We're actually approaching this on a census-track-by-census-track basis. We have about 100 census tracks in the city of Philadelphia that have an inordinate number of imminently dangerous and vacant properties.</s>HEMMER: So what's been the reaction there in the community? Certainly when they see buildings collapse like this at this great number, folks can't be too pleased.</s>MARTZ: No, obviously not. And, as I said, I mean, the mayor recognized this was a huge problem a year ago and we are in the process of putting together a blight strategy here in the city of Philadelphia. And as I said, I mean, I can't think of another time in the city's history when we planned to spend upwards of $250 million on any project of this magnitude. I mean, we're very, very concerned about it. We believe that there are going to be more collapses and we're doing our best right now to get our hands around the problem and start the process of actually demolishing these properties.</s>HEMMER: And, quickly, the figure you give, $250 million, seems like a pretty good amount of cash, but is it enough to take care of what appears to be a pretty massive, wide-scale problem?</s>MARTZ: Well, it costs about $10,000 to demolish a property. And, hypothetically, if it's 25,000 properties, that would be $250 million.</s>HEMMER: All right, Joseph Martz, city manager in Philly, best of luck.</s>MARTZ: Thank you very much, Bill.</s>HEMMER: All right, sir, thanks.