Packed party causes ceiling to cave in on apartment below, NC college students say
College students had to check into a hotel after a packed off-campus party caused the floor of a North Carolina apartment to nearly collapse, news outlets reported.
Danielle Caiola said she was in the apartment below when she heard a party and saw her ceiling start to break last month.
“Our ceiling was bouncing with their jumps and all of sudden, our whole ceiling cracked throughout the apartment and caved inwards above our heads,” she told McClatchy News in a Twitter message.
Caiola, a junior at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, said she and her roommate Annette Medina warned the people upstairs of the danger. They are now among several college students displaced after the incident at the Block 43 apartment complex, WXII and WGHP reported.
“We were afraid we could have been asleep,” Caiola said. ”We were also scared that if we didn’t warn the party-goers they all would have (fallen) through the floor. All in all, this will be a very difficult and draining process for us, as we have lost our home and possibly all of our stuff for at least a while.”
The Greensboro Police Department said it responded to the complex at about 3 a.m. Oct. 26 in reference to a reported noise disturbance and found a crowd of more than 100 people.
“The fire department was called out because of possible structural damage to the apartments caused (by) the number of people,” police spokesperson Ron Glenn told McClatchy News in an email. “The same thing happened the next night as well around midnight.”
The second night, officials responded to a different unit in the same complex and broke up the crowd, which again had more than 100 people. Varsity Campus, the company that manages the property, said no more than 10 people are allowed inside each unit at once.
“Our residents are responsible for following the rules and regulations set out in the Lease Agreement as well as being responsible for the actions of their guests,” Varsity Campus said in an statement sent to McClatchy News. “Unfortunately, some residents chose not to follow these rules and the result was significant structural damage to the property. Fortunately, no one was injured and we are grateful for that.”
Troy Powell, community improvement division manager for the city of Greensboro, said the floor of one apartment buckled during a night of partying. The other unit was also left with serious damage.
“You take 150, 250 people in standing in one area in the building and have them jump up and down, something’s going to give,” Powell told McClatchy News in a phone interview.
Officials condemned upstairs and downstairs apartments at the complex, according to Powell. Varsity Campus said it paid for the residents who were impacted to stay in hotels until they could find other housing.
“In over 20 years of professionally managing off-campus student housing across the country, we have operated academically-focused communities free from incidents of this nature, and we will be sending a clear message to our residents that this type of behavior will not be tolerated for their safety and for the good of the community as a whole,” Varsity Campus said in its statement.
This story was originally published November 4, 2021 at 10:03 AM.
