After months of waiting, a legion of concerned citizens and media outlets got what they had been waiting for — the state’s report on its investigation into the deadly collapse of the west wall of a six-story Davenport apartment building May 28, 2023.
The Iowa Public Information Board ruled in May that it was up to the Department of Public Safety, the Department of Criminal Investigation's (DCI) umbrella agency, whether to release the report as its lawful owner. Until now, inquirers were only given a seven-page summary of the report that included the root and proximate causes of the collapse.
The full report had previously been guarded by the Scott County Attorney’s Office, which decided not to file criminal charges in February and said releasing it could bring safety risks to the building’s owner, Andrew Wold.
The full report reveals new details about how much Wold and the city knew about the building’s structural decline leading up to its collapse through documents and interviews collected by DCI investigators.
City officials had ‘no idea’ who was making repairs to the west wall
In an interview with the city's Development and Neighborhood Services Director Rich Oswald, DCI investigators learned city officials did not know whether the masons working on the west wall were licensed.
Oswald said that he, along with City Inspector Trishna Pradhan and Wold, had gathered at the apartment to discuss repairs to the building prior to the collapse. Pradhan told Wold his masons had to be licensed, and Wold said the masons he had contracted were and worked for Fuessel Masonry.
Pradhan left for a vacation May 25 after issuing Wold a permit for repairs. According to Oswald, Pradhan neglected to say that Wold had said his masons were licensed in her report before she left. When Pradhan returned from vacation after the collapse, Oswald said Pradhan had made edits to her report, including changing the status of the pre-collapse inspection from “Passed” to “Incomplete.”
“We, collectively, had no idea who the individuals were performing the masonry work on the building leading up to its collapse or whether whoever was performing the work was a licensed mason,” Oswald said, according to a summary of his interview with DCI investigators.
The report states Oswald told city officials afterwards that he would fire Pradhan over the alterations. This is confirmed in a statement from the city issued June 1.
According to his testimony, Oswald also said he was unsure if city officials had notified Wold that having residents in the building during repairs was unsafe.
Two days later — just one day before the wall collapsed — records show a city worker who was picking up trash adjacent to the west wall phoned Tony Behncke, the operators director at Downtown Davenport Partnership, with concerns about the wall.
The worker took pictures of the wall and sent them to Behncke, who called 911 after city officials with Development and Neighborhood Services did not answer the phone.
An employee in the department then called him back and reportedly told Behncke that she and Oswald had returned to the site and didn’t see anything had changed since the May 25 permit was given.
The report states that the photos taken by the worker were passed along to the mayor and city administrator.
The city of Davenport did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Wold dodged DCI investigators in weeks following collapse
In the days leading up to May 28, Wold reportedly had at least two individuals onsite making repairs to the west wall. A summary of one interview with a metal shop owner in Bettendorf says Wold was shopping for steel beams on the day of the collapse.
“Wold identified some scrap steel ‘S’ beams in the shop he wanted to purchase for the construction,” the report states. “[Redacted] then said Wold looked at his phone, covered his mouth and then stated, ‘I’m not going to need ‘em ... thanks guys ... it just went down.’”
Additionally, County Attorney Kelly Cunningham said the fact that Wold had been working on repairs leading up to the collapse informed her February decision about whether to hold him criminally responsible.
“That was certainly the state of affairs leading up to the point of the collapse of the building,” Cunningham said in February. “I mean, he’d even made arrangements to have someone over the course of that weekend stay there inside the building just to monitor what was going on, relative to the structure.”
Over a week after the collapse, DCI investigators tracked Wold down at his mother-in-law's residence in Le Mars and approached him with a search warrant for his cellphone.
Wold met them in the driveway, where the investigators introduced themselves and told him they had a warrant.
“I pointed out that he had one phone in his hand and asked if he had any more inside. Wold then ran from me, going back through the open garage door, through the garage stalls and into the house from the garage,” per agent Matt Burns’ account of the incident.
Burns and another agent chased Wold through the garage until Wold locked the house door behind him. Wold then contacted his attorney, who advised Wold to hand over his phone to the agents.
Some residents feel vindicated, others left with questions
Fueled by the fact that no criminal charges have been filed against Wold or his companies to date, users in the Facebook group Whistle Davenport have turned it into an information hub of public records, news links and personal accounts of the collapse.
Several users expressed interest in the report after Jon Uhl, the group’s creator, obtained the full report May 30 through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
“This is AMAZING! Congratulations on getting that!! Stellar work! Thank you for being so persistent!” said one user in the comments on one of Uhl’s posts about the report.
But Uhl himself still feels there are rocks to be overturned. He noted Oswald’s testimony about Pradhan’s alterations and that the city had identified an IT glitch with regards to the public-facing aspect of its permitting system as cause for alarm.
Uhl also said it appears to him that there were efforts taken to eliminate some personal testimonies, although he did not say which ones.
“You would think that there would be additional follow-through,” Uhl said. “I don't see any. Some things that are missing from the report may be more alarming than what’s in the report itself.”
