Updated 6 mins ago
LONG BEACH, Long Island (WABC) -- Long Beach Police said multiple balconies collapsed Tuesday morning in an apartment building.
Six balconies collapsed at the building at Shore Road and Long Beach Boulevard.
Police said no injuries were reported.
This is an occupied three-story building a block from the beach and city officials are investigating the cause of the collapse.
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6 balconies collapse at Long Beach apartments
LONG BEACH, Long Island (WABC) --
The Long Beach Police Department said multiple balconies fell Tuesday morning from an apartment building.Six balconies collapsed at the building at Shore Road and Long Beach Boulevard.
Here's a view of the scene from NewsCopter 7:
Police said no injuries were reported.
"It seems the middle balcony may have given and then the top one came down," said Long Beach Fire Department Chief Robert Tuccillo. "Thank god it happened early in the morning. No one was sitting on their patios. No one was walking by."
The building is in the early stages of construction. Fire officials said a company set up scaffolding just a few days ago to repair decaying bricks, and that was enough to cause everything to fall.
"This wasn't safe from the get go. That scaffolding just helped it come down," said Tuccillo.
Here's what the outside of the building looked like in February 2013, as viewed by Google Maps Street View:
This is an occupied three-story building a block from the beach and city officials are investigating. ===============
This is not the first time that balconies have collapsed in these buildings on Shore Road. The lack of maintenance will cause the mortar joints to deteriorate with time, leading to the structural collapse of the balconies. This is the typical cause of these types of collapse.
Fire officials: Long Beach balcony collapse on Shore Road a structural failure
Updated June 4, 2013 1:15 PM
Officials say the collapse happened at around 8:30 p.m. on Shore Road. (June 4, 2013 7:32 PM)
Engineers are looking into what caused a concrete apartment balcony in Long Beach to collapse, injuring five.
Long Beach fire officials say a second-floor balcony on Shore Road detached from the side of the building and fell to the ground Monday at around 8:30 p.m. They say five people were on the balcony at the time.
Witnesses say one of the victims was unconscious.
The collapse was caused by structural failure of the balconies due to lack of maintenance.