Pekin streets remain closed after building wall collapse takes down power lines
While contractors were working on a partial demolition of the Pekin Township building at 1313 Petersburg St., Pekin Thursday afternoon, the facility’s south wall collapsed. The collapse took down several power lines and leaving live power lines down in the roadways.
Pekin City Manager John Dossey said in a Thursday news release that emergency personnel responding to the incident expanded the safe zone out of an abundance of caution.
Broadway Street is closed between Fourth Street and Elizabeth Street to vehicle and pedestrian traffic. Elizabeth is closed between Fourth, and Broadway Street is closed from Broadway to Court Street. Fourth Street remains open for north and southbound traffic.
”The City of Pekin will continue to provide updates as they become available, but for now ask that everyone please avoid the area as there are high risk of safety concerns due to live power lines being down,” Dossey said.
Dossey added the collapse resulted in power outages in downtown Pekin. Ameren crews have worked to switch power at substations and have isolated the outage to the Township building and the area immediately around it.
The collapse occurred at 4:30 p.m. Thursday. The demolition underway at the time had been necessitated by a Wednesday roof failure at the building and the collapse of its west wall.
This article originally appeared on Pekin Daily Times: Pekin building collapse closes streets, downs power lines
