Category: Life in the Big City
Last night’s fireworks
They were pretty amazing. I don’t know who paid for them, but in the past 6 years of budget cuts, they’ve been “eh.” Last night’s were the best yet. This isn’t the sharpest video, but you’ll get the idea.
Life and death in the city
So I pulled into the Mickey D’s drive-in after I went to the gym; I figured I could grab an Egg McMuffin and take it to the Jiffy Lube while I got my oil changed.
But on the side of the parking lot, I see what appears to be a fight. Someone’s on the ground, and I pull my car over, ready to tell this crowd of people to get away from him.
That’s when I saw someone was performing CPR. The guy on the ground looked young (late teens? Early 20s?). I pulled out my phone and called 911. They said someone had already called it in. It was another five minutes before both an ambulance and a fire engine showed up, and by then, I was at the Jiffy Lube. I hope the kid made it. He was too young to die.
The city closed down some of the fire stations, the ambulances have to travel a lot farther now. This fucking city, this goddamned state with this Republican-controlled legislature: Tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts! Bastards.
Sad
Sounds like he did the right things, just not enough of them:
Ronald Wagenhoffer, the city inspector who previously examined the four-story Center City property that collapsed onto a Salvation Army thrift shop June 5, killing six people and injuring 13, committed suicide in a secluded stretch of Roxborough Wednesday night, authorities said.
Wagenhoffer, 52, was found inside his truck, with an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest, on Shawmont Avenue near Nixon Street.
“It was my fault. I should have looked at those guys working, and I didn’t,” Wagenhoffer said in a video message, which was obtained by NBC10, that he recorded on his cellphone before shooting himself. “When I saw it was too late. I should have parked my truck and went over there but I didn’t. I’m sorry.”
Wagenhoffer said in the video that he couldn’t sleep because of the deaths, the news report said.
Those who knew Wagenhoffer described him as a kind, pleasant man who was always eager to lend a hand – and who was also undoubtedly haunted by the fatal building collapse.
City officials were quick to note that they had no issues with the job Wagenhoffer – who worked for the Department of Licenses and Inspections for 16 years – did while inspecting 2136-38 Market St. in February or when he returned May 14 to examine a permit issue at an adjacent property.
“I will state right here, right and now, this man did nothing wrong,” Everett Gillison, Mayor Nutter’s chief of staff, said yesterday. “The department did what it was supposed to do under the code that existed at the time, and we are proud of the department and its employees – period.”
The end
UPDATE: City officials say he did everything right when he inspected the site, but was tormented by the deaths.
The man who inspected a building on Market Street before it collapsed last week in Center City Philadelphia, killing six people, was found dead last night in an apparent suicide.
Northwest Detectives said 50-year-old Ronald Wagenhoffer was found dead from a gunshot wound to the chest at about 9 p.m. Wednesday.
I’d like to think he was simply upset over the deaths of all those people, but this being Philadelphia, it probably had more to do with the announcement of a grand jury to look into the building collapse.
Update
Just wanted to let you know that thanks to your help, my neighbor has worked out an arrangement with her landlord, and if she can keep up with her payments, she can stay.
So thanks to each and every one of you who donated!
Mayor Nutter
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I don’t know why anyone’s surprised. Nutter is a technocrat who used to be a municipal bond dealer. His wife Lisa works for a charter-friendly organization and supports the schools breakup plan:
Nutter explained that at the core of the SRC’s plan is an approach to decentralize. “I agree with that,” she asserted. “Some parts of the public school system need to be dismantled.” Nutter said she likes the SRC’s strategy to implement so-called achievement networks, groups of 25 schools that would be competitively managed according to performance-based contracts, utilizing value-added assessment. “It makes sense to me,” Nutter said, adding that coming into the network with an established skill set will be a critical factor.
When people ask the question “Where this has worked?”, Nutter said the answer is difficult to come by because “nobody’s done this.” She mentioned that other cities, such as New York and Denver, are only just starting to move in a similar direction. The precedent is just not there. Philadelphia is “not often thought of being in front of things, but we actually are,” Nutter elaborated.
WTF?
Tornado watch tonight? Wasn’t expecting that…
Friend of Ed’s
Someone tried to report dangerous conditions at demo site
A Reddit reader reported that he’d made a complaint to the city’s 311 call center on Tuesday to report unsafe conditions at the demo site, but the city didn’t check into it because he didn’t know the property’s exact address. He contacted the center again after the collapse, saying they didn’t stop that tragedy but that similar conditions existed at another nearby demolition site.
The intake worker’s response? They needed the exact address.
Of course, even if this worker hadn’t been dangerously indifferent, the city probably doesn’t have enough building inspectors left that they would have sent someone, anyway.
The video below shows demolition work on the building Sunday afternoon. That’s a subway entrance in front of the building: