Hardhats required

From the Forum:

A Howard Beach family was nearly driven from their home after the ceiling in their living room collapsed on Friday morning. Sandra Hanan was watching TV about 9 a.m. when she decided to go into the kitchen for a bite. But as soon as she got in the room she heard a loud splintering sound followed by crashes and bangs coming from the living room.

When the senior citizen raced back inside she was horrified at what she saw before her. The entire ceiling had collapsed onto the family living room, covering furniture with split sheet rock boards and stucco.

The rocking chair where Sandra had been sitting only minutes before was now buried under a pile of broken boards with large nails protruding from them.

Her husband ran from the bedroom to see what had happened–worried that his wife had an accident or even worse, that his 88-year-old mother-in-law who lives with the couple, had fallen. “My heart was in my mouth as I came running down the hall,” Rocky Hanan said. “I looked at the chair my wife sits in every day and couldn’t help but get sick to my stomach thinking about what could have happened to her.” They immediately called the fire and police departments.

Hanan said that he and his wife moved into the apartment a little over a year ago in June of 2011 and that there were problems right from the start. Instead of waiting for the landlord to come and fix little things, he did it himself at the couple’s own expense.

Then last summer things at the house started to get much worse after the basement took on a few feet of water. According to the couple, the landlord didn’t address the problem until everything was covered in mold. “He never had anyone come in and do mold removal,” Rocky Hanan said, “they [workers] just put new sheetrock up on the walls so potential buyers for the house wouldn’t see what was underneath.”

Despite the mold condition he said he had no idea that things were so bad under the ceiling that it would just collapse.