Public servant spotted cracks before downtown parking garage collapsed

Twelve hours before her downtown Ottawa parking garage collapsed, Line De Matteis walked inside.

Nothing had given her reason to believe the garage was unsafe. As a public servant, she'd been driving into work three days a week since September and parking there.

Even as she returned to her car last Tuesday evening, there were no emergency crews outside, no strange noises in the building, nothing to make her feel uneasy.

Then she saw the cracks.

"My first thought was, oh my god, it must have been [a] large truck that came in and hit the ceiling," De Matteis said.

De Matteis was one of just a few people to spot the cracks before the garage's top floor gave out around 4:45 a.m. the next morning. 

There were no reported injuries. Crews worked overnight to clear part of the structure so that Slater Street could be reopened Thursday afternoon.

Five days after the collapse, however, dozens of vehicles remain stuck inside — and they could be trapped there for weeks.

'I didn't know the extent of it'

From the safety of her car, De Matteis took a photo of the crumbling concrete and sent it to Indigo, the company managing the garage. She marked the message as urgent.

"I did what any citizen would have," she said.

Once she sent it, she hastened to get out of the building. That took her about 10 minutes, as four or five other cars were in front of her. By the time she was outside, emergency crews had arrived. 

"I put my window down and I told the fireman it was me who had informed Indigo … of the crack on the fifth floor," she said. "The fireman thanked me and said, 'Yeah, we're looking into it right now.'"

Though the crack had been concerning, De Matteis said she didn't expect the garage would collapse.  That was why she didn't give it a second thought until the next morning.

But around 7 p.m., structural engineer Adam Hosny got a call.

'Concerned right away'

"The fire department had closed down the street and they wanted us to come out and assess the structure," Hosny told CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning.

His team of four were the last people in the garage before the roof came down.

They'd gone to the level just below the roof, the same area where De Matteis had parked. Like De Matteis, Hosny said he wasn't expecting the damage to be so substantial.

"I was expecting to see a beam that's undergoing failure but hasn't failed," he said. "What I saw was a beam that had already failed. So we were concerned right away."

His team got out safely, and Hosny said he told the deputy fire chief that "no one should go back in this building."

The next morning, De Matteis woke up to learn that it had collapsed. 

"My office is literally just next to it," she said, adding that her coworkers have been sending her pictures of the crews demolishing the part of the building closest to the road.

De Matteis said she finished the week working from home and has "no idea" where she'll park now.

"I'll have to go probably an hour or two earlier just to find another area because parking was already a concern," she said.

And she's conscious that everyone who parked in the lot will now be competing for fewer spots. She said the city should be trying to ensure there's more parking available downtown. 

"I know that they want to support the LRT, but I come from the west end, and the LRT is not here yet," she said. 

"The buses, where I live, they're not consistent. … Even if I finish at 4:30, I may get home at 7 or 7:30, and to me, it's time taken away from my family."