Disgraceful Reporting Dishonors Victims Of The O'Donnell Park Tragedy

On June 24, 2010, tragedy struck Milwaukee County.

As people were streaming in to enjoy the first days of Summerfest, a 27,000 concrete facade fell off the O'Donnell Park parking garage and struck three people, killing fifteen year old Jared Kellner and injuring two others.

Kellner's parents have since filed a lawsuit which has been working its slow way through the courts. Recently, expert witness reports have been filed with the court. The reporting on this by Steve Schultze of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is absolutely disgraceful in its inaccuracy (emphasis ours):

Milwaukee County has long blamed faulty installation for the 13-ton concrete panel falling from O'Donnell Park two years ago, killing a 15-year-old Greenfield boy.

Implicit in that view was that the county had no blame in the tragedy, in which two others were injured.

New theories advanced in the accident shift the focus back on the county, alleging that improper maintenance may have played a role or that snow removal equipment bumped and loosened the panel that dropped from the O'Donnell ramp facade over the Lincoln Memorial Drive exit, according to expert witness reports filed in a lawsuit that is a year away from trial.

[...]

Advance raises a series of possible contributing factors to the panel collapse, including water infiltration weakening the connections, pressure on the panel connection caused by problems in the ramp construction and impact damage. Snow removal equipment and heavy trucks likely damaged the panel and it may have been slammed from inside the ramp by vehicles parked near the panel that fell, according to a Thornton Thomasetti report.

There is absolutely not one thing new about the concern regarding deferred maintenance and its role in the O'Donnell Park tragedy.

As Milwaukee County Executive, Scott Walker was infamous for his preference of kicking the can down the road by deferring maintenance and delaying repairs on many county buildings, especially those in the parks. In an audit done just six months before the tragedy, the county auditors presented a report listing almost $300,000 in deferred maintenance and delayed repairs just to the parks buildings.

Nor was it the first time that a county building fell apart from the poor care they received under Walker's watch. A piece of cornice fell off of the Milwaukee County Courthouse fell off just months before the tragedy.

Immediately after the tragedy, then Milwaukee Board Chairman Lee Holloway issued a statement of sympathy and ordered that the rest of the county buildings immediately undergo inspection.

Not only did Walker show deplorable behavior by condemning the statement, but his own actions showed exactly where his priorities were, and they weren't with the victims:

What makes Walker’s accusations even more egregious is that the first thing Walker did was to check in at the courthouse to see if there was any deferred maintenance. At the press conference that occurred shortly after the tragedy, after appropriately expressing his sympathy for the victims, Walker felt it necessary to keep repeating that there was no deferred maintenance that he was aware of. It was as if his first concern was that he didn’t get blamed for this catastrophe.

If one wanted further proof that deferred maintenance is not a new theory by any stretch of the imagination, one would not have to go further than the same paper. On July 6, the paper had a report that included this snippet (emphasis ours):

Though the connections are drawing the interest of investigators, including the sheriff’s department and district attorney’s office, it’s not yet clear whether a change in design would explain why the panel dislodged and fell.

Engineering experts caution that there is rarely one villain in such accidents, and unlikely suspects can play a surprising role.

“Usually the small details cause big problems,” said Al Ghorbanpoor, chairman of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s civil engineering department.

Also to be explored is whether the county took steps over the years to block moisture from getting into the joints connecting the panels to the walls. Moisture could have corroded the connections, said Ghorbanpoor, who has investigated building failures.

And then on the very next day, they had another article which had this in it (again, emphasis ours):

Experts agree that the top of the slab, where the panel was connected to the parking garage wall, is the key weight-bearing point. They also say that hanging such panels – which are purely a decorative feature – is a straightforward job that doesn’t require sophisticated engineering.

“There could be 10 different ways of doing this,” said Al Ghorbanpoor, chairman of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s civil engineering department. Investigators will want to check the design, the quality of construction and maintenance of the panel, he said.
Indeed, a review of the maintenance records from the 2009 audit shows that a lot of work needed to be done on the parking structure.

Walker and his apologists claimed that the repairs had been made in the six months between the audit and the tragedy.

However, an independent study of the building by Inspec revealed otherwise. It was so bad that engineer Dwight Benoy said that the parking garage was "one of the worst ones" of the hundreds of buildings he's ever seen. Their 66-page report verifies that the building was in horrendous condition with many needed repairs as a result of obviously very poor maintenance.

Perhaps the most egregious part of the whole story is why the maintenance was deferred and the repairs went undone.

In a article appearing in the BizTimes, Milwaukee County Supervisor John Weishan exposed the fact that in Walker's eight years as county executive, he raided the the capital fund, diverting $112 million in sales tax revenue, which was earmarked for maintenance and repairs and used it to fill gaps in his operating budgets.

Whether the recent article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is the result of sloppy reporting or part of the paper's ongoing history of under-reporting Walker's responsibility for many of the problems that Milwaukee County has and is still experiencing as a result of his poor leadership skills, it is utterly disgraceful and downright shameful for the way it dishonors the victims of this horrid tragedy.

It also is a gross disservice to the people who rely on them for factual and honest reporting.  They have the solemn responsibility to do better than that.

Cross posted at Milwaukee County First.