Urgent evacuation for Miami Towers residents

The residents of Miami Towers which is located at Oklahoma are forced to evacuate the building within 24 hours. Last month the city inspectors held a meeting in order to determine if the building was safe or it has damage. On Wednesday, they came back with the assessment that the building must evacuated because the 107-year-old building is structurally unstable due to damage to its pillars.

The building of Miami Towers needed diverse repairs for a long time. The damage is so extreme and it is dangerous to live inside. It must be evacuated in order to be renovated. With these actions they want to avoid to tear the building down as Miami Emergency Management Director Thomas Anderson said.

The evacuation is inconvenience for the residents as they have to leave by Thursday noon and they were not informed sooner. As a maintenance worker stated, about 40 people are living to the seven-story building and there are about 12 tenants with businesses in the mini-mall on the ground floor.

“We don’t have much time to even scramble to get a storage building, where do we go so quickly, but we will get packed up and be out of here by noon tomorrow,” Glen Wiford, Owner of Serendipity on Route 66 said.

Anderson says they jumped into action after receiving the report earlier today.

“We just found out at nine o’clock this morning that it was extreme circumstances on the building and because of the extreme nature of the damage of the building we didn’t feel like they had that much time. We want to make people as safe as possible,” Anderson said.

Risa Harvell has lived in the Towers for ten years and said that leaving her home is not only difficult but heartbreaking.

“I have to move myself, I have no family members I can stay with, I don’t know where I’m going to go,” Harvell said.

She said with such short notice, she has not found a new place to live and she has no idea where she will be putting her head to go to sleep tomorrow night.

The Miami Housing Authority says anyone who needs resources with funding a new place or moving should contact them at 918-542-6691 for help.