I-Team: Expert Says Collapsed Parking Garage 'Not That Difficult To Fix'
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DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) - Five weeks after the partial collapse of a parking garage of the Renaissance on Turtle Creek Condominiums, more than 300 cars remain trapped inside the structure.
While a handful of vehicles were crushed by the falling concrete, most of the vehicles in the garage are unharmed - just stuck.
So how do you get hundreds of cars out of seven-story garage when seemingly the only way down is full of holes?
It's a question residents have been asking for weeks.
"I have no idea," resident Bora Tasic said. His car is among those still stuck inside the damaged garage.
The CBS 11 I-Team asked University of Texas-Arlington civil engineering professor Dr. Simon Choa, PhD. for his expert opinion.
"This is like a Lego set," he said about the garage. "I would say it's not that difficult to fix because of the way it was built."
The parking structure at the Dallas high-rise condo is known as a precast garage.
Most new parking garages are built this way.
Precast garages are built in pieces at a factory. Then those pieces slide together on-site.
Due to the method of construction, Chao said only the damaged sections of the garage where the holes are will have to be torn down and then replaced with new pieces.
Most of the garage can remain intact.
"You can take it out easily," he said. "It's very doable."
Chao said he believes the cars sitting in the undamaged sections of garage can likely stay there until the garage is fix and then their owners can simply drive them out.
Tuesday evening the condominium's HOA met with the construction company hired to fix the garage and get the cars out. Residents were told there is still no definitive strategy or timeline as to when they'll get their cars out.
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