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| A Resident Makes His Feelings Known this Morning at 9am |
On January 10, the disastrous Windermere Court apartment fire was at the forefront of Philadelphia's attention. As traumatic as that day was, the last month has been a lot worse for the former residents. While the entire greater Philadelphia community went out of its way to show us love and generosity, the city and the building owners have left us stranded in a twilight zone.It appears the Windermere residents were about to be subjected to the City of Philadelphia bureaucratic indifference and buck-passing. From the same email dated today Feb 14th at 8am.
There were trapped pets in the building. There was a protest to allow for the rescue of the animals before the planned demolition today. Well, lets go back to the email.
The city, the management, and their insurance company instead played a game of “Pass the Buck,” and they've been playing it for too long now. We need to know if we or our representatives will be allowed into the building. Right now, if you talk to the owners, they say it's up to the insurance company, and the insurance company says it's up to L&I, and L&I says it's up to the owners. It's like rocks-paper-scissors, except we always lose. As we scrambled to find answers, they rushed through the demolition approval process. Demolition proceedings are due to start Monday morning, February 14.
Much much worse, there are still pets in the building. Although we were assured a week after the fire that no pets had survived, owners of missing pets did not give up. A grassroots effort has managed to lure missing animals into baited traps and get them back to their owners. After our protest at the building this last Saturday, the PSPCA broke the locks and entered the building with a warrant. They rescued one cat, almost trapped another, and saw fresh evidence of many cats still living in the building.When the pets were rescued, it was discovered that the building was allowed to be RANSACKED since the security company was was pulled off the site. I later found out this evening at 6 that the security was pulled off since the insurance company stopped making payment. They were put back on when the date of demolition was set (today Feb 14th). We go back to today's email.
The city had already pulled police presence off with no notice to us shortly after the fire. Then, the private security that replaced them was pulled off last Tuesday. We only found out when we checked on the building ourselves. Former residents had to form our own security patrols, walking a beat around the building with the wind chill below freezing every night. Suddenly, now that demolition is imminent, the security company has reappeared.There were people and organization that stepped up and working on getting the 90 folks back their lives in the face of bureaucratic double-talk. Here is more from the Windermere. A resident talks about what she and other have been though. This was taken around 5:45pm.
The police said that when they were guarding the building, they only let authorized people in. The management and the security company say they didn't let any looters in either, and that any looting happened prior to their watch.
The owners said they had a plan to clean the building and make basic repairs – that was weeks ago. Our city council representative said she initiated a plan to get insured contractors into the building to retrieve our property, but called it off after the owners claimed permission had to come from L&I – that was weeks ago.
Our neighbors lifted us up in our time of need. The Red Cross, the Salvation Army, the Bible Way Baptist Church and 30 affiliated Baptist churches, Local 44, the Drexel chapter of Alpha Pi Lamba, friends, family, and complete strangers from all around us – they lifted us from our misery and helped us get back on our feet.As this morning dawned all these wonderful efforts were shamelessly offset buy the city in tandem with the owners of the Windermere Apartments.
But we no longed feel lifted up. After more than a month, all we can feel is fed up. We are fed up with hearing five different answers from three different people. Fed up with promises from our city officials that amount to nothing. Fed up with closed meetings and backroom dealings. Fed up with knowing that our property, our pets, the pieces of our lives that we thought were benevolently spared, that they may soon be destroyed with no second thought.I decided to witness myself the unfolding events since I work so close to the apartments and I lived at 49th and Locust till 2004.
I did show up this morning at 9am and there was a spirited rally. I took some photos and interviewed the President of the Walnut Hill Community Association Horace Patterson who in this video states that his organization is committed to helping the folks who have their belongings in this building.
Later, I was there when Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell expressed her strong support to stopping the demolition. As reported on the UC Neighbors email list at 7:14pm today.
"We've been granted 48 hours for the judge to review our request to set aside the L&I ruling from Friday (for immediate demolition).Here is Councilwoman Blackwell being interviewed by Vernon Odom of 6 ABC Action News. I watched the 11pm newscast. They did not run this interview instead they compared mascara at least 7 kinds. What a joke. Anyhow, here is the video. I think the Councilwoman is on the ball with this one.
When the judge makes that decision, we are hoping that he'll allow some type of "salvage" for pets & possessions."
GREAT NEWS! We still need to continue to communicate our concerns, so that they can be shared with the judge & city officials. But many thanks is due to Jannie Blackwell & Marty Cabry for their work on this today!
I hope to get more info over the next 2 days. email mkrullrt55@gmail.com
if there is any info. I wish the folks luck!!
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