Twin Peaks San Francisco House Owned By Building Inspector Collapses Overnight


A Twin Peaks San Francisco house collapsed overnight on Monday, while it was still under construction. The house is owned by the former president of the San Francisco Building Inspection Commission.

Emergency personnel were called to the house at 125 Crown Terrace around 10:30pm when the neighbors heard what sounded like a dump truck releasing its load. When police and firefighters arrived, they found the home several feet down the hillside.

No injuries have been reported, though the collapse did cause the evacuation of the house just downhill from it.

Building inspectors had looked over the San Francisco Twin Peaks neighborhood home Tuesday to determine what caused the 72 year old house to collapse. The foundation was still being worked on when the steel cradle gave way, no longer able to hold the house up. Its plummet was halted by its retaining wall, which remains all that keeps it from tumbling further into the homes below.

A spokesman for the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection, William Strawn explained, “Engineers for the owner think a weld in the cradle may have given way, allowing the house to rotate, but we’re still investigating. The main concern now is securing what’s left of the structure.”

According to an article published last year in the San Francisco Weekly, owner Mel Murphy had been planning to have the home demolished, but those plans had been denied by the Planning Commission because the house at the time was structurally sound. This was partly because of San Francisco’s ban on destruction in lieu of affordable housing. Instead of demolishing it, the owner decided to remodel, expanding on it, much to the dismay of neighbors who reportedly called the house an eyesore.

After the collapse, the Twin Peaks San Francisco house is no longer structurally sound, so now engineers will be working with the owner to decide whether to try preserving the house or get an emergency demolition permit. All that’s left of the foundation now is a mess of mud and split boards.

Monday night’s collapse could mark the end of what appears to have been a neighborhood and legal dispute over the house.

[image via ABC Local]

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