6,500 injured in deck collapses since ’03
Associated Press
BERKELEY, Calif.
An estimated 6,500 people have been rushed to emergency rooms with injuries from collapsing balconies, while 29 – including six college students in Berkeley this week – have been killed since 2003.
One reason, experts say, is balconies are particularly vulnerable to dry rot.
“It’s all about creating a safe structure that has endurance, that has a reasonable life expectancy,” said David Helfant, who identified potential flaws in design and construction after an unofficial inspection of the Berkeley balcony that collapsed.
“When I see something like that in a town I work and live in, it’s extremely depressing; it’s upsetting,” he said.
A Consumer Product Safety Commission analysis for The Associated Press estimated that 4,600 emergency room visits were associated with deck collapses in the past decade, and an additional 1,900 with porch failures.
With millions of ER visits a year in the U.S., “the type of incident that happened in Berkeley appears to be rare,” commission spokesman Alexander Filip said based on data collected from 100 hospitals to make the projections.