Building Collapse in Downtown Arcadia

27 July 2022

ARCADIA – Around noon today the OCI Building, a historic building that houses the main office of OCI Technologies, collapsed in downtown Arcadia. The building itself was a three-story, 126-year-old brick building that, in recent years, had shown some signs of disrepair. Parts of the trim around the roof had fallen off, paint was peeling off the walls, and the flooring was partly disintegrating and sagged in places if you stepped on it. Along with this, a small fire almost completely destroyed the back storage rooms back in 2023, causing further structural integrity problems. OCI Technologies have been running into problems with the law, including scamming buyers which have led to heavy fines placed upon the company, which in turn, reverted funds from fixing up the building to paying those off. They have also failed multiple surveys from the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transportation, adding warnings and public safety notices, saying that the company, unless they fix up their building to comply with guidelines, will be put on a federal eviction notice, meaning, they will lose the building to the government for a small sum of ⳩10,000.

Authorities are unsure if any people were in the building at the time, but they have estimated a total of about ⳩67,000 worth of damage was caused, including damage to a nearby barbershop. The cause of the collapse is unknown at this time.