Nightmare. Chaos. Uncertainty. Revictimization. Fear. These are some of the words that the residents of the complex use to describe their situation. Patricios Park buildings which remains evacuated after the collapse of the parking lot slab in the early hours of March 3. Are 175 families who do not know if they will return to their homes in a matter of weeks, months or yearsdepending on the versions. While the judicial investigation progresses, the daily lives of more than 300 people happen between hotels, moving, bags, misinformation and more moving.
“Most of the evacuated people are in hotels. I’m in Las Americas. But they are about to move us to another one. They divided us into different groups but we all have reservations until Monday. Afterwards, we don’t know. At the hotel they tell us that they have many rooms reserved for Lollapalooza and instead of moving those people they move us. “They don’t have the meaning of the word ‘revictimization’ at hand.”questions Fer Albornoz, one of the affected neighbors.
After the dawn of the collapse, as the days passed, the families had to add to the concern for their homes the complaints for access to hotel rooms in good condition and with fixed stays for an indefinite period of time until it is defined what will happen to the building complex. For the moment, they did not succeed.
Uncertain future
“Among the main demands were the conditions of the hotels to which the evacuees were referred, as well as the provision of food, clothing, mobility so that boys and girls can attend school and the situation of their pets,” reported the City Ombudsman’s Office after a survey among victims.
In response to the query of Timefrom the Ministry of Human Development of the Jorge Macri government, responded that “sometimes in emergency situations, when hotels are obtained, they take families for a day so that they are not on the street, but perhaps that hotel already had rooms committed for the next few days and generally prioritizes clients with reservations. It may happen that due to hotel issues people have to be relocated.They assured that “they are not going to be left without accommodation, the decision is to accompany them until the underlying problem is resolved.”
It is not known when that will be. “When I joined I was 27 years old and I was a monotributista. At the time it was between a pride and a miracle, being young, to be able to have my own house. Suddenly, that is tinged with total uncertainty because we don’t know when we will be able to enter. Answers range from one week to two years. Or never,” laments Juan Bautista Canavesi Sosa, evacuated after the collapse.
“Depending on who we talk to, the answer is different. From the City Government, in two meetings where they were hyper positive, they said that supposedly next week we will return. The construction company speaks of one or two months, at least. The study by Fernando Burlando (which represents more than 150 of the affected families) speaks of years, one or two. We cannot even get an average with that,” Albornoz summarizes.
The Buenos Aires government clarified that “the responsibility of housing people lies with the construction company while carrying out work entrusted by Justice so that the buildings can be habitable again.” There are 322 people who chose to stay in hotels.
Years with leaks
The technical report prepared by the City Fire Department Inspection Office reported on coating detachments on columns, visible deformations on beams, vertical and horizontal cracks on external walls, leaks and moisture stains, among other flaws.
The leaks They had been a source of complaint for a long time. According to what the administrator of the affected sector declared before the Criminal, Contraventional and Misdemeanor Prosecutor’s Office No. 31, there were warnings on the issue since 2022 to both Banco Hipotecario and the Cosud company, today investigated for negligent damage.
The complex of four closed towers is part of the Buenos Aires Station entrepreneurship, developed within the framework of a national program and gone through different efforts. “This ProCreAr is the largest in the country, we are talking about almost a neighborhood within a neighborhood where 2,500 families will live,” said in 2018 Mauricio Macri’s Minister of the Interior, Rogelio Frigerio. Then, the homes were assigned under the presidency of Alberto Fernández. The Buenos Aires government intervened through the Housing Institute and Banco Ciudad. The company in charge of the affected sector – and other towers – is South American Construction Company (Cosud).
“There may have been a confluence of factors: a construction not in accordance with the weight of that parking lot, leaks that lower the strength of the structure. We must also evaluate the vibrations produced by recitals in Huracán: they may have helped the cracks to increase. A cluster of causes. Which one was more important has to be determined by Justice,” explains Jonatan Baldiviezo, from the Right to the City Observatorywho led a collective protection so that the City gives details of the work, the controls and also covers all the victims. “It wasn’t sudden –remarks-. The leaks are being reported. “There were many irregularities that warranted the State and the company to pay attention.”
Fear of more collapses
“She saved me,” says Miriam, pointing to Kikina.. She lives alone in an apartment on the third floor of sector two and did not hear the roar of the collapse. But there were the screams of her neighbor, who became desperate to alert everyone to get out. Kikina Aguilera is an oncology patient. He finished chemotherapy 20 days ago and is about to start rays. In the midst of the housing chaos, between a friend’s house and a hotel, I had a medical shift. The Ombudsman’s Office had taken his data so that the company could guarantee transportation. The vehicle never arrived.
The stories are as many as there are affected neighbors.. Teresa Alfaro has a son with a disability and she tells with horror what it was like to go down with him – a young man 1.90 meters tall, with autism – seven flights of stairs in the dark. The improvised evacuation included falls and left bruises still visible. Yordis Rangel, 20 years old, feels privileged because his home is not in the area of collapse. But the business that supports his family: a deli that already had to throw away all the merchandise. He does not know when he will be able to turn the machines back on. He is not sure what he will do in the future, he did not have a plan B in mind.
This Saturday they held a “hug” demanding justice, in Astor Piazzolla and Montesquieu. “Let those responsible take charge,” they demanded. They also asked to “go home.” Although they know there were marks left. Someone says that he has been suffering from nightmares since that morning. One woman says she wakes up every night at 4:30, the time of the collapse. Another is that when they allow him to return he will be afraid to enter again.
There are panic attacks and worries that exceed the four towers of sector 2: The fear of more collapses spread to the entire Buenos Aires Station complex.
The judicial investigation and doubts about habitability
The judicial investigation is in the hands of the Criminal, Misdemeanor and Misdemeanor Prosecutor’s Office No. 31, which requested a report from the City Fire Department and in the first days ordered the shoring up of the place. Until last week, the neighbors had not been called to testify, but the administrator of the sector of four affected buildings had been. According to reports, he reported at least seven claims for leaks for which there was no response from the construction company Cosud, except for a verbal agreement that was not fulfilled.
From the Prosecutor’s Office they indicated to Time: «No income will be provided for the moment, it is a matter that must be enabled and authorized by the GCBA, based on the shoring work that they ordered for security reasons.
The property is closed by the GCBA. “The technical report with the results of these tasks has not yet been submitted.”
Neighbors were waiting for the results on the habitability of the place that Justice must determine. “‘Livability’ is not only that the buildings are shored up but that the services that are cut off today come back. I have a cardiac arrhythmia, there are many people with disabilities. If the electricity doesn’t come back we can’t go back due to the lack of an elevator,” anticipated neighbor Fer Albornoz.
«I requested psychological assistance for my family, but it was null»
Melisa Guevara is a resident of the 11th floor of one of the four towers evacuated after the collapse. She shares her house with her husband, a five-year-old girl and a five-month-old baby. She cries when she says that her daughter tells her every day that she wants to return home and she doesn’t know what to promise her.
“They dragged us from our house shouting ‘it’s collapsing!’ Imagine what that was like for the children,” he says. At first he stayed at his mother’s house, then he accepted the hotel assigned to him by the City Government, but he considered that he did not meet the minimum conditions to stay there with children. Finally his grandmother moved in with another relative to leave them her apartment. “Since that morning, my children slept in a lot of different beds. But our center of life is in our neighborhood. My daughter goes to a school nearby, she does activities nearby. The logistics became a lot complicated,” he laments.
“I requested psychological assistance for my family, but it was non-existent. They called me and told me ‘I understand’. I am with private assistance. It is not good psychologically to live in uncertainty and they do not inform us anything. My five-year-old daughter tells me all the time ‘I want to go back to my house’. It breaks my heart not to be able to tell her if we are going to return or not. It was her place, with her toys, her friends. It is very sad. Children cannot live five days in one hotel, five days in another. They need a routine, a home.”
