Disaster response inspectors evaluate every building damaged by tornado
ST. LOUIS, Mo. (First Alert 4) - Volunteer engineers and building inspectors from across the state have converged on St. Louis to examine every building damaged by the May 16 tornado.
St. Louis Mayor Cara Spencer spoke about them at her 1 p.m. tornado response update on Thursday.
“We have dozens of building inspectors from around the region engaged in helping us,” she said.
80 of a team with the Missouri Structural Assessment and Visual Evaluation (SAVE) Coalition are going building by building in the path of the storm to determine the level of damage to structures impacted by the tornado.
“I have a red sticker.” said Stacie Nash, who lives near Cates Avenue and Academy Avenue.
The tornado damaged the roof of her house and two brick walls.
Volunteers are doing visual inspections of buildings to determine which are safe and which need to be evacuated. A colored sticker is placed on the door of each building to indicate the results of the inspection.
A green sticker indicates a building is safe. Yellow stickers indicate that a structure is safe to enter but it’s not recommended that someone live there. And red stickers mean a structure is severely damaged and it’s recommended that no one enter the building.
Spencer said she wanted to clear up any confusion and said residents are not being forced to move out.
“Our goal here is to inform the public of the level of instability in the buildings. It is purely informational,” she said.
Inspectors placed a red sticker on Derick Whitley’s house on Cates Avenue. A large part of the wall on the front of his house collapsed in the storm.
Whitley said he knows his house is a dangerous place to live, but like many living in damaged homes, he doesn’t have anywhere else to live.
“I’m still looking but I haven’t found anything yet,” he said.
Spencer said the city is looking at redeg the stickers and ing out pamphlets along with them, to better explain the goal of the inspections and alleviate any fears.
The work of the inspectors will give the city an exact count of the number of structures damaged and how many had so much damage that they’ve been deemed unsafe.
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