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2/16/2007
On Thursday,
February 15th, at a little after 11:00 AM, part of the parking garage at
the Poughkeepsie Galleria collapsed. I found out about it Thursday
night while I was at work. This is important to me for many
reasons. First off, I've parked both on, and under that garage.
While the odds are against it, I could very well have been there with my
family when it collapsed.
It is important to me for another reason as well.
Although it had slipped my mind for many years, I was warned a long time
ago not to ever park on, or under that garage. Now I don't know if
the person I got this story from really knew what he was saying, or if
he was right, but I know that he warned me about that parking garage,
and the end result was a collapse of the garage.
In the hopes of avoiding a law suit over this, I'm
going to state right now that I am only relating a story that was told
eo me many years ago. I have no idea whether it was true or not.
I don't remember exactly when, but either in my Junior
or Senior year of high school, I became friends with a young man, a
couple of years older than me, who had moved into the condo complex I
lived in. His name was Ray Bingham Berry (I'm not completely
certain of the spelling now). I bought an old beaten up Plymouth
Valiant from him and his mother, and fixed it up a bit to use for school
and such. Ray, his girlfriend (Brenda) and I drove to the local
malls a few times, including the Galleria.
When we went to the Galleria, Ray insisted that I NOT
park on, or under the garage. He related a story (told from
memory, this was nearly 20 years ago, so details might be wrong) about
the construction of the garage. Apparently, he knew someone that
was involved, either in the engineering, or structural construction of
the garage. He claimed that this guy he knew had told him that the
garage was not being built as it should be, that they done some things
very wrong, and it wasn't built at all the way the design called for.
Ray said his friend told him that garage was guaranteed to fail.
He said he didn't know how long it would take, but it was going to come
down eventually.
I don't know much about engineering, and I don't know
if the story was true or not. It could very well be that they just
piled too much weight on one area of the garage, but I KNOW that I was
warned this would happen nearly 20 years ago. |