If the Irving parking garage collapse didn’t destroy their cars, this would do it

At least 30 cars were damaged when a parking garage collapsed in Irving on Tuesday morning, but more cars could be destroyed.

Assistant Chief J. Taylor of the Irving Fire Department said the garage has been handed back over to the Dallas-based property owner — Lincoln Property Company, at 2000 McKinney Ave.

“It’s up to property management to deal with a game plan on how they’ll move forward,” Taylor said Wednesday. “They can possibly say none of it is safe and all vehicles may not be able to come out.”

Calls to Lincoln Property Company weren’t immediately returned Wednesday.

Taylor said the company has barricaded the property and has hired 24/7 security so people can’t access the site. It’s unknown exactly how many cars are still stuck in the garage.

He said Tuesday that if the structure is deemed irreparable, “they may have to implode the garage with the vehicles on it. Unless they can be removed with a crane. Maybe.”

There was no public information available on when the last time the Irving garage — at the corner of O’Connor Ridge Boulevard and Fuller Drive — was inspected.

The first collapse happened at 11:27 a.m. No one was injured. Had it happened earlier in the morning, or closer to the lunch hour, the collapse could have been deadly, Taylor said.

“Timing is everything,” he said. “It was just the perfect storm that gave us a good outcome that no one was there.”

The second fall happened at around 4:30 p.m. No one was injured then either.

“We had a no go zone because we already knew that there were two sections we thought would come down,” Taylor said. “One was the one that fell. We felt strongly that the corner would also fall.”

As of Wednesday afternoon, that corner was still standing.

This story was originally published August 1, 2018 at 5:10 PM with the headline "If the Irving parking garage collapse didn’t destroy their cars, this would do it."