ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, August 15, 1996 TAG: 9608150069
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: ROCKY MOUNT
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP AND TODD JACKSON STAFF WRITERS
NOTE: Above
Edith Cook stood outside a yellow band of police tape Wednesday and looked at the building she had been living in on Monday.
Cook said she'd like to go in and get her belongings.
Problem is, she can't.
"I got a 100-gallon fish tank up in there with fish in it. I did think to take my birds," she said of her evacuation from an apartment building off North Main Street in Rocky Mount. She and about 15 other low-income tenants were forced out when heavy rains damaged the four-story building on Greenmeadow Lane Monday night.
The county building inspector has condemned the building, owned by William Bratton of Roanoke. Tenants have been warned it's too dangerous to go back inside.
Gushing runoff collapsed portions of a concrete porch and asphalt in front of the building, and eight inches of mud and water rushed into the apartments on the bottom floor Monday night, said Investigator Jackie Hubbard of the town police department.
Soon after, the building's foundation cracked in several places and the back walls buckled.
Sandy Mattox, a former construction worker, said he noticed Monday afternoon that a concrete porch connected to the front of the building was slowly pulling loose from the structure, exposing metal rods. "Every time we looked out, it would give a little bit more."
"You could hear the building popping and cracking," Cook said.
Mattox wishes he'd gotten his Sunday suits out of there when he and his niece were told to leave about 8 p.m. Monday. He's wishing, too, for his antique chairs and an old sewing machine. "It was one of the first Singers they made," he said. "All I've tried to build up, and all at once it's not there."
Unless Bratton's engineer, coming to inspect the building this morning, can find a way to stabilize it, the building and all the tenants' possessions may be bulldozed.
"I mean, everything I got is up in the apartment," Cook said, "and some of that stuff can't be replaced." Her 10-year-old daughter, Porcha, wished she could get her clothes, photographs and "some of my mama's important papers."
Betty Adkins, a hand-sander at Lane Furniture, said her downstairs neighbor and Lane co-worker, Alvin Tanks, called out to her Monday evening to come see something. When she did, she witnessed the muddy water quickly covering his floors and the twisting that had begun in his bedroom walls.
She said Tanks had bought a nice set of Lane furniture. "He lost everything," she said. "He had some pretty white furniture."
Franklin County Public Safety Director Claude Webster said that, as of Wednesday night, the building is secure and no one is allowed in until it can be stabilized.
Although Webster, Hubbard and others say the building appears in no shape to be salvaged, Bratton isn't ready to bring in the wrecking ball yet.
He says he doesn't know enough about the situation to make a final decision.
"I'm trying to work with the tenants," he said. "I don't know anything else."
Bratton's insurance company has yet to decide whether it's going to compensate him for the building damage, he said.
Tenants also want answers. If the building is demolished and they can't get to their belongings, they're hoping Bratton will reimburse them for their losses.
Bratton, a Roanoke minister, said he's always assumed, based on state law, that landlords are responsible for the buildings they own and not what's in them.
However, Nancy Brock, a lawyer who's representing three of the building's tenants, said Bratton can be held liable if it's proven that his negligence caused the problem.
Tenants said they've dealt with leaks in the building for a long time. "Yeah," said Cook. "Everybody has. The bathroom was leaking one time but he wouldn't fix it," she said of Bratton. He checked two weeks later, she said, but Cook had gotten a man in the neighborhood to fix it.
Another neighbor had rain pour inside from the roof, another's pipes burst and yet another's ceiling bulged, she said.
Cook paid $235 a month for her apartment; Adkins and her boyfriend, Frank Martin, paid less - $200 - because they mowed the yard. Six of the building's eight apartments were occupied.
Tenants now are scrambling for new places to live. The county Department of Social Services, the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army have arranged for tenants to receive food stamps, free meals and housing at the Budget Host Motel. Some are staying with friends or relatives.
Tenants are wondering why Bratton is taking so long to figure out what to do with the building. He went there Monday night.
"He came and stayed about 15 minutes, and he was gone," Cook said.
Betty Adkins talked with him for 10 minutes. "He said he was sorry."
Bratton said Wednesday that he bought the building from Ivan Winston of Roanoke about three years ago.
At the time the sale took place, the town of Rocky Mount had cut off water to the building because the owner had not paid a bill, a town official said.
The local Health Department intervened and condemnation of the structure was being considered when Bratton's company, A&B Property Management, bought it, and the water service was later restored, the official said.
There have been other problems at the apartments: A concrete balcony on the second floor collapsed several years ago, and several large cracks in the foundation have been patched with concrete.
But the problems weren't all structural. Town police officers said the building has been the scene of drug activity over the years.
Nothing much may be taking place there anymore.
Bystanders could hear windows and walls cracking Wednesday night.
Hubbard, the police investigator, was one of them.
"If there was a million dollars in there, I wouldn't go in to get it."
LENGTH: Long : 115 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ERIC BRADY Staff. 1. Edith Cook, with her 6-year-oldby CNBson, Martavious, can't retrieve their belongings from the apartment
building. 2. Damage to the rear of the Rocky Mount apartment
building is evident. The dwelling was condemned by the county
building inspector after heavy rains Monday. 3. (headshot) Mattox.
color.