Falling bricks do damage to car in downtown Pittsburgh; portion of sidewalk blocked off

PITTSBURGH — Right after 4 p.m. Sunday, Pittsburgh police officers noticed bricks falling off the side of a building in the 900 block of Penn Avenue.

Police called the Pittsburgh Bureau of Fire and the Department of Public Works for assistance, and wooden barricades were placed on the sidewalk around the building.

“I work right across the street and I didn’t see anything but headlights and cop sirens, and then there’s a brick falling,” said Dillon Obenreder, who works nearby. “What if there was somebody standing under it?”

No one was injured by the falling bricks, but investigators said that the bricks knocked out the back window of a car that was parked in the lot below.

Obenreder has lived and worked in the city for over 30 years. He frequently walks through the city and said he’s concerned by what he sees.

“Falling bricks, falling gutters, falling roofs, fire escapes damaged, rotting metal holding buildings up,” he said. “It’s just unsafe in general.”

“Half the buildings in downtown Pittsburgh are from like the early 1900′s, for the most part, and none of them are looked after,” Obenreder said. “Especially, like I said, the alleyways get neglected. Everyone does their storefronts and parking lots and everything, but nobody pays attention to the structural damage of the buildings.”

A section of the sidewalk on Penn Avenue remains blocked off, and the Department of Permits, Licenses and Inspections is set to determine the structural integrity of the building.

Fire crews on scene of fire in Robinson Township

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