Jill Schramm/MDN Images showing deterioration of a Minot building’s columns display on a computer behind city building official Luke Tillema, Thursday. Catastrophe was avoided last year because of actions taken by the city and property owner following an engineer’s inspection.

When a pre-purchase inspection uncovered significant structural damage in a downtown Minot building last year, the Minot City Inspection Office was called in to help head off a potential collapse that could have led to loss of life.

The averted disaster spared Minot its own version of the larger scale incident in Surfside, Fla., last month, in which a 12-story beachfront condominium property pancaked, leaving 22 confirmed dead and 128 missing, as of 5 p.m. July 2 reports.

The Minot incident happened just over a year ago, according to Luke Tillema, City of Minot building official. Less than five months into his job as building official, Tillema received a report from a structural engineer, suggesting the city order evacuation of a building on Main Street due to imminent danger of collapse.

Tillema explained that a concrete floor with a vapor barrier had been recently installed in the building’s basement, but for many years the building had only a dirt floor, allowing moisture to enter the structural columns.

“That moisture in that basement was just eating away at the concrete and mortar, to the point where it exposed the rebar and was doing the same thing to the rebar,” Tillema said. “I did issue an evacuation of that building. We displaced a business and a few families that lived above the business.”

The property owner funded alternative housing for the displaced tenants for about 10 days, until the building could be stabilized.

Working with the city to assess the property, the building owner hired an engineer to design the repair. A local contractor performed the work under the city’s inspection, resolving a crisis that could have impacted neighboring buildings as well as tenants had the structure fallen.

“Now it’s business as usual,” Tillema said.

Tillema said evacuating a building is a difficult decision, but in this case, the inconvenience was a small trade-off to potentially save lives.

The incident also highlights the importance of the work of building inspectors.

The City of Minot’s building inspection office examines all new buildings in the city and extra-territorial area as they are constructed. A new home typically is structurally inspected five times during the construction process to confirm compliance with the building code and then is given a final inspection when completed, Tillema said. In addition, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing inspectors make calls between three and five times.

“The people who end up purchasing the house or moving into it, we have 100% certainty that they’re safe inside of that building,” Tillema said.

Some cities have a schedule on which they inspect existing buildings to look for problems. Surfside has a program, but findings from the most recent inspection reportedly came too late for residents of the collapsed condominiums, Tillema said.

“We do not currently have a program like that set up, although we have been discussing it internally for about two years,” Tillema said.

The city inspection office does get involved with existing buildings when problems are brought to its attention, such as happened with the downtown building. Tillema said tenants who become aware of structural concerns but aren’t able to resolve them in working with property managers and owners can contact the city, which commonly is able to work with owners to correct issues.

The city has six inspectors. Three are specialized in commercial, residential or mechanical construction, two are electrical inspectors and one is a senior inspector, who currently also handles plumbing inspection due to a vacancy on staff. All have extensive backgrounds in construction and the trades, said Tillema, who worked in the construction industry for 20 years before joining the city.

Tillema said Minot residents often don’t recognize the importance of the work of building code inspectors – until a tragedy happens somewhere.

Then, he noted, “It gives them a sigh of relief to know that we are here, I believe. And we all do a pretty good job, in my mind. We’ve got one of the best staffs in the state for knowledge and experience and understanding the code and applying it correctly in the field. Everybody is a certified inspector through the International Code Council, which is who writes the books, so that’s a pretty big deal.”

Many requirements in the building code are there in response to tragedies, Tillema added.

“There’s a reason for all of it. and it is for the safety of people,” he said. “The main function of this department is ensuring that you can walk into any building in the city and feel safe in it – that it’s built correctly and that it’s safe for people to occupy.”