Youngstown council meets for first time since deadly Realty Building explosion
A week and a day after the deadly blast at downtown Youngstown's Realty Building, the search for definitive answers is sure to last a lot longer than that.
Fire Chief Barry Finley told 21 News the city is in the process of hiring a third party structural engineer - someone not connected to the city or the building owner - to give an unbiased opinion. The building owner's insurance company will also bring one in
"The city's structural engineer, his job is to go in and see is this building structurally safe and sound," said Finley. "The insurance company's structural engineer basically is there to say 'are we going to allow this building to stand, are we going to fix it or are we going to tear it down?'"
That process includes vetting the engineer and getting Council and the Board of Control to approve.
In the meantime, we asked Finley why it's taking so long to know the status of the building's safety, and why he isn't making that determination.
"This was a commercial building," he said. We then pressed him about this circumstance versus the demolition of Anthony's On the River, to which he replied "everybody makes a big deal about this. Here's the thing...I did what I'm trained to do and it was the right thing to do. Whether people agree with that or not...I'm the one who shoulders the responsibility. If something would've happened and I would've known about it, it would've been the other way around. 'What is this fire chief doing? He knew this was like this...' and I would've been in trouble. I'm standing by my decision."
We wanted to know if Greenheart Companies crews doing the utility work in the basement when the explosion happened had been vetted. Law director Lori Shells Simmons told us off camera she was confident of that.
We also wanted to know where the money came from to pay Greenheart to do the work.
The mayor left before we could ask him. First ward councilman Julius Oliver pointed us to law director Simmons. When we asked her, she referred us to public works director Chuck Shasho. When we approached him with our questions, he said answer them all during the Board of Control's meeting Thursday morning.
Other business Wednesday night saw council green-light an ADA-approved kayak launch on McKelvey Lake, and vote to formally oppose a proposed 30 percent rate hike by Dominion Energy. Council also passed a measure to establish a strategic plan to improve communications from city departments and improve the city's image. That came with a $60,000 price tag.
