By Maggie Cassidy and Gal Tziperman Lotan, News Staff
‘ Click here for Monday and Tuesday’s coverage. For photos from the scene on The News’ Flickr page, click here.
‘
He said it felt like a bomb.
Glenn Goldey was in his room at 337 Huntington Ave., a Northeastern residence hall, when the building’s cornice collapsed Monday morning.
The stone trim that borders the roof and outer wall disconnected from the building while workers were replacing the roof, sending about 100 feet and several tons of debris falling onto the sidewalk.
Nobody was injured during the 8:30 a.m. incident, which made national news. The cause remains undetermined.
Boston Fire Department spokesman Steve MacDonald called it ‘an absolute miracle’ that nobody was walking underneath the cornice when it fell, but Goldey’s first reaction, he said, was to run downstairs to dig out anybody who could have been underneath the piles of stone.
The sophomore behavioral neuroscience major ran downstairs, but roofers from Haverhill-based Progressive Roofing ‘- the company who has been replacing the work for at least a month ‘- soon told him nobody was beneath the rubble. Shortly thereafter, another resident, Chris Wiley, returned from his 8 a.m. class to see his home surrounded by emergency personnel and the slabs of concrete covering the sidewalk.
Having lived there all summer, Wiley said it was one of the only times he had seen the stretch of sidewalk free of pedestrians, he said. ‘
‘Every day that I’ve left, there’s a ways at least one person on that street, and the fact that nobody was under [the cornice when it fell] is amazing,’ said the junior electrical engineering major. ‘The only time I’ve ever seen the street that empty is 3 o’clock in the morning.’
Goldey and Wiley were two of about 60 residents Northeastern relocated Monday night following the collapse. Students, who made up the majority of the building’s residents, were relocated to Davenport B, said Mike Armini, vice president of marketing and communications. All residents were briefly escorted into the building to grab essential belongings Monday night and Tuesday afternoon, Armini said, and will not return to the building this summer.
The rest of their belongings will be retrieved and moved today with the help of a moving company hired by the university, Wiley said.
The Department of Residential Life had bed sheets, basic toiletries and coupons for free dining hall meals waiting for the relocated students. The building’s Residence Director, Greg Houghton, notified all residents’ parents by phone, and many former 337 Huntington Ave. residents told The News they were happy with the university’s response, which Wiley called ‘quick’ and ‘efficient.’
Other students and parents, however, said they felt the university did not communicate quickly enough.
After sending an e-mail to full-time faculty and staff about the incident Monday, he said the university decided to send a university-wide NU Alert at 11:46 a.m. yesterday after officials ‘got a sense of the scope of this issue.’
Although some students and parents said they would have appreciated an NU Alert on Monday, Armini said he felt the university made the right decision by focusing on the 60 affected students. He said officials sent an alert to only faculty and staff Monday because many students are away during the summer, and the former would be on campus.
‘Today we decided to broaden it,’ he said yesterday. ‘Sometimes we send out alerts to the broader community and we get criticized for over-communicating.’
However, some students and parents of incoming freshman ‘- many of whom were on campus for the collapse for freshman orientation, said they would have appreciated an NU Alert earlier.
‘If my student was in that building, I absolutely would have wanted one and I would have been very angry if I hadn’t received one. ‘hellip; I would have wanted to know that it did or didn’t affect my son,’ said Mark Abramowitz, who traveled from southern California for his son’s orientation this week. ‘The whole country has seen this, so I’m sure there are some worried parents out there,’ he said. ‘It sounds like a shortcoming in the protocols for their notification system.’
Girish Tewani, a senior graphic design major, and Angel Trinidad, a junior political science major, said in separate interviews that the NU Alert was less useful Tuesday than it would have been Monday, while graduate student Mark Salzillo said he signed up for NU Alerts but never received one.
‘That’s something that’s important for people to know about, especially when roads are closed down,’ he said. ‘I did hear somebody mention in my class that our school was falling apart.’
Other students, like sophomore electrical engineering major Carl Benes, said he was fine without an NU Alert about the collapse.
‘They got to send out alerts about sickness and weather that you might not be aware of,’ he said.
‘It’s either you are disrupted on your sidewalk path or you’re not.’ Armini said.
Northeastern has hired structural engineers to determine the cause of collapse, which disrupted MBTA service on the Green Line’s E branch until 11:30 a.m. Monday morning and forced the closing of Huntington Avenue’s westbound lane from Gainsborough to Forsyth streets. That stretch of Huntington Avenue remained closed late last night, with police directing traffic two ways in the eastbound lane.
‘
