Rockslide damages cars in parking lot of North Bergen apartment building
NORTH BERGEN, N.J. -- There were frayed nerves and an expensive clean-up at a luxury apartment building in North Bergen on Tuesday.
It appears heavy rain triggered a large rockslide.
Work crews lifted sections of wall that could not withstand Tuesday morning's rockslide.
Chopper 2 was over the area at the rear of the Dutchess Luxury Tower on River Road, where the rain-soaked cliff gave way. It rolled down with enough force to obliterate fences and pelt cars with rocks, mud and debris.
Eighth-floor tenant Joshua Hay said he noticed something wrong late Monday night, with a few rocks littering the parking lot. There was a much larger slide after 2 a.m. on Tuesday.
"All of a sudden, the building starts shaking," Hay said.
With his cellphone camera, he recorded video of damage to the inside of the parking garage and inside the building.
"A lot of the rocks splintered in the form of a fragmentation," Hay said. "The hallways on the third and fourth floor were messed up. The rocks came in, glass was broken."
There were no injuries.
Hay's car was untouched, with rocks landing a few feet away from it. Many other cars, however, were dented and had glass shattered.
One car belongs to tenant Wei Zhang.
"I only found out when I woke up in the morning. I got the email from management, and then we ran down to see how's our car," Zhang said. "The whole front got smashed. The front window is cracked."
She said she won't be able to drive it while it's damaged, so she'll have to take the bus to work.
Engineers were on the scene as tenants asked ask the question why this keeps happening. There was also a rockslide in September.
"It wasn't this bad. It was a lot less. I know some cars got previously, got kind of destroyed," a tenant named Joshua said.
New, stronger walls and perhaps netting are likely to be on a list of demands from tenants who eagerly wait for results of the investigation.
Residents said the previous rockslide at the property also took place during a rainstorm.
