CLEVELAND, Ohio — A tenant is asking News 5 for help getting answers after the ceiling in his apartment building collapsed on top of him. He tells News 5 it's uninhabitable and something needs to be done.
Gerald Raines lives on the first floor of The Sands Apartments.
Raines said he was having a cup of coffee with a friend on Saturday morning when the ceiling came crashing down.
“I came to the bar here to open up one of the bottles of liquor I got; all of a sudden the ceiling slammed me to the floor,” said Raines.
Raines said he and his friend Linda Porter Smith were hit by heavy debris.
“I said, what is that noise? And next thing, you know, woom! And then it was like a cloud of dust,” said Smith.
Raines, a disabled war veteran, has lived in the apartment for more than a year and says he's continuously complained to the complex about the cracks in the ceiling, and a long list of other issues in the building.
“There were cracks all over. If you walk over here, you'll see there are still cracks right here. This is going to come down, too,” said Raines. “My ceilings in my kitchen has leaked. Cracks all through the building."
According to Raines, maintenance just covered up the cracks with plaster, but he's not the only tenant to complain. Smith's son lived in the same apartment before Raines, and the issues haven't changed.
“He used to complain to the maintenance man as well about the cracks in the ceiling, as well as the crack in the floor over there,” said Smith.
News 5 reached out to the facility's maintenance man, the building's owner, and Cleveland’s Department of Building and Housing to find out when the complex was last inspected as well as how many complaints have been filed against it; no one has gotten back to us.
As for Raines, he wants to move but doesn't have a place to go, and he's terrified the structure that was built in the 1930s will continue falling apart.
“I don't want to die in my home asleep because all this concrete falls from their ceiling down on me. I’m 73, I'm tired. I felt as though this would be the place where I would live until I died. But now I have to get out of here,” said Raines.
On the day that the ceiling fell, Cleveland Fire transported Raines to the hospital.
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