'It's Alarming To Me': Long Beach Building Inspectors On Alert Following Florida Condo Collapse
LONG BEACH (CBSLA) — Long Beach has hundreds of older high-rise buildings near the water, prompting building officials to take a hard look at the deadly building collapse in South Florida to see if any local changes should be made.
"It's alarming to me, I use that term because you want to make sure that that doesn't happen to your community," Long Beach Building Superintendent David Khorram said.
The city is currently undergoing major high-rise construction, but right next to the new buildings are hundreds of older ones that have withstood the test of time. But Khorram said once they learned the cause of the partial collapse in Florida, his inspectors would be trained on what trouble spots they should be looking for locally.
"We'll have some kind of training so we all, as a team, learn about it," he said. "So when we go out and enforce or we make judgement based on construction we'll make a better call."
Khorram said the city has been proactive, tearing down the old City Hall building instead of modernizing the older structure. And, he said, there is a team of code enforcement personnel who concentrate on the hundreds of older stucco high-rise buildings to make sure they're up to code. But tragedies can happen, even in the best prepared cities.
"Being a building official, and being realistic, the damages and collapses could happen anytime," he said.
And once the cause of the Florida collapse is determined, Khorram said his inspectors will undergo training to try and make sure it doesn't happen in Long Beach.
