How One Demolition Contractor Responded to an Emergency Parking Garage Collapse

Gorick Construction Co. Inc. responds to an emergency parking garage collapse at a hospital in Johnson City, NY

The upper deck of a two-level parking garage connected to the United Health Services Wilson Medical Center in Johnson City, NY, collapsed. Multiple vehicles were trapped underneath the caved in upper section; others tottered precariously on the crumbling top level.
The upper deck of a two-level parking garage connected to the United Health Services Wilson Medical Center in Johnson City, NY, collapsed. Multiple vehicles were trapped underneath the caved in upper section; others tottered precariously on the crumbling top level.

By Alex Schlosser

Information from this article was first published in Demolition Magazine and is being reused with permission from the National Demolition Association.

On July 16, 2015, the upper deck of a two-level parking garage connected to the United Health Services Wilson Medical Center in Johnson City, NY, collapsed. Multiple vehicles were trapped underneath the caved in upper section; others tottered precariously on the crumbling top level.

A structural collapse is always an emergency, but in this situation, the possibility of the vehicles being occupied raised the stakes. Broome County Emergency Services immediately knew who to call: NDA member Gorick Construction Co. Inc. “Gorick Construction was called due to our long-standing commitment to provide immediate professional service in these types of situations,” says Alfred Gorick Jr., the company’s president.

Within hours of the collapse, Gorick Construction got to work. Before the emergency medical services personnel could inspect the vehicles to determine no one was trapped, a Gorick crew of between eight and 12 people began installing temporary shoring on the remaining structure to impede further collapse. The medical center’s main IT department was located in the basement underneath the parking garage; if the parking structure continued to fall, it would be a much bigger disaster.

“If the IT department went down, the entire hospital, along with the emergency room, would have to be evacuated,” Gorick says.

The crew also installed shoring in the basement between every column line. “We installed four tractor trailer loads of shoring in the IT department,” Gorick adds. “All men and material had to enter through the existing hospital cafeteria, and shoring had to be taken down a stairway.”

Once the shoring was in place, the Gorick Construction crew began removing the collapsed concrete to allow the EMS personnel to safely inspect the crushed vehicles. Large machines were needed for the primary demolition and vehicle removal, and they had to work from outside the footprint of the collapsed structure so it wouldn’t add weight to the first floor deck and cave it in more.

“We had to continuously inspect and adjust shoring in the basement as we removed concrete and vehicles to make sure it stayed tight to the first floor deck,” Gorick says. “When weight was removed from the deck, it rebounded from the deflection of the weight.”

Once a majority of the concrete and vehicles were removed, mini excavators and skid steers were allowed on the deck to complete the project. After two weeks of “working around the clock,” Gorick says, the project concluded on July 31. The hospital’s operations — even access to the emergency room across the street — were not hindered throughout the process. Most importantly, there was no loss of life and no injuries.

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