Social Security building cordoned off, Chester St closed, Elm St reduced to one lane

[ron_newman]

As I walk by right now, there's a fence around part of the Social Security Building, closing off the adjoining sidewalks on both Elm and Chester streets. Chester Street is closed to traffic between Elm St and Redbones. Dunkin Donuts is closed, and the bus stop has been moved temporarily down the street to in front of Anna's Tacqueria.

A cop stationed nearby said that a piece of the building fell into the street, but I don't see any rubble or any missing piece of the building.

A reddit thread points off to a tweet saying "Dunks + old Social Security bldg in Davis Sq has significant structural integrity problem".

Anyone know more??

Comments

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

Ok, so that's the second building that's fallen into the street in Somerville this fall. When are we going to actually get inspectional services?

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

I don't think there's any inspection system to prevent buildings from falling apart. The incentives are pretty strong for the building owner to keep the building together, because fixing such problems is expensive and they are liable for any damages.

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

We have inspectional services. They're just too busy hunting rats to worry about little things like buildings falling into the streets.

[fangirl715.livejournal.com]

Don't downplay the rat thing--we just noticed them around our building in the past couple of months or so (since the landcritters dumped some dirt in our yard areas; don't know if there's a connection or not...), and when both candidates for Alderman in Ward 5 feel compelled to tell Scout Somerville that one of the first things they want to work on if elected is to do something about the rat problem, well...I guess it's safe to say we're not the only ones w/a problem. (Psst, Mark: I'm going to hold you to that.) On Halloween night I ended up standing on the sidewalk w/a bowl of candy for the kids, because I didn't want them coming down the stairs to my basement apartment door due to the rats deciding that right then was a good time to Come Out and Play in the area around the entryway. *sigh*

But yes, Inspectional Services needs to get cracking on making sure buildings don't keep collapsing at inopportune moments (then again, I don't think there is such as a thing as an opportune moment for a building to collapse...). Is it too much to ask that they handle that AND do something about Willard/Ben and their little buddies?