Honestly, it’s the kind of sound you never want to hear while you're grabbing a morning coffee. A low, heavy rumble that vibrates right through your feet. On October 15, 2025, that’s exactly what happened at the Westchester One parking garage at 50 Hale Avenue.
Around 9:08 a.m., a 1,200-square-foot section of the fifth floor just... gave up. It buckled and pancaked down onto the fourth floor.
Concrete met steel.
Metal met metal.
By the time the dust settled, more than a dozen cars were trapped in the "collapse zone," some looking like they’d been through a trash compactor. We’re talking about massive concrete slabs resting on hoods and roofs. It’s a miracle no one was killed. Public Safety Commissioner David Chong basically said as much, noting that if this had happened just 40 minutes earlier during the 8:30 a.m. rush, we’d be talking about a very different story.
The White Plains Garage Collapse: A Close Call
What’s wild is that this garage is huge. It’s 14 stories. It serves the Westchester One office tower, medical workers from the nearby hospital, and shoppers heading to the Westchester Mall. When that section fell at an angle, it didn't just break some cars; it paralyzed the day for hundreds of people.
One medical assistant, Rachel Meiselman, was just starting a new job. She came out to find her new car potentially totaled. Another driver, Siobhan Rossi, actually saw the "huge sinkhole" in the floor and managed to drive her car out just before they sealed the place off. Imagine the nerves of steel required to drive across a floor when you can literally see the level below through a hole in the pavement.
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But the real shocker came a few days later.
Why the Inspection Records Matter
You'd think a massive structure like this would be under a microscope, right? Especially in New York, where we have strict laws about this stuff. Well, it turns out the White Plains garage collapse pulled the curtain back on a pretty messy situation.
According to Damon Amadio, the White Plains Commissioner of Buildings, the garage owner (44 South Broadway Owner LLC) hadn't actually filed the required structural assessment reports. Under a 2018 New York state law, these privately owned garages have to be inspected every three years by a licensed professional engineer. This specific garage was supposed to have reports on file for 2019, 2022, and 2025.
The city didn’t have a single one.
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Even weirder? The city had been issuing permits for "specific structural repair work" on the garage for the last few years. So, the Building Department knew work was happening, but nobody noticed the mandatory safety audits were missing. It’s a classic case of the left hand not talking to the right.
It Wasn't Just One Garage
Once the dust settled at 50 Hale Avenue, the city did a quick audit. They found that 40 other parking garages in White Plains were also missing their mandatory inspection reports.
Forty.
That’s a lot of concrete to just "hope" is holding up. The city scrambled to do walk-throughs of those 40 structures in the following week and said they didn't see anything "precluding continued utilization," but they started handing out court appearance tickets like candy to the owners.
What Actually Caused the Failure?
The investigation is technically still a thing, but the visual evidence was pretty damning. People who used the garage daily, like Fatima Chavez, had been saying for months that the building "shakes a lot" and didn't seem to be in good condition.
When you look at the photos from the scene, you see exposed, oxidized rebar—that’s the metal mesh inside the concrete. When water and salt (thanks, New York winters) get into the concrete, that metal rusts. When it rusts, it expands. When it expands, it cracks the concrete from the inside out.
The garage was actually in the middle of being repaired when it failed. A firm called Superstructures was overseeing work there and had reportedly done an assessment in 2024, but that report wasn't filed with the city until two days after the collapse.
Lessons for Westchester Drivers
If you’re parking in these older, multi-story decks, you've gotta be a bit more observant. We often treat parking garages like invisible infrastructure, but they are heavy, complex machines.
- Watch for standing water: If there’s a puddle on a sunny day, the drainage is failed, and that water is eating the deck.
- Look at the "shaking": Some vibration is normal, but if it feels like an earthquake every time an SUV drives past, that’s a red flag.
- Check for rust stains: If you see orange/brown streaks coming out of cracks in the ceiling above your car, that's "concrete cancer" (oxidized rebar).
The city is definitely being more aggressive now. They’ve moved toward a stricter enforcement model because, let’s be honest, "blessed" is not a sustainable safety strategy.
If your car was involved in the October 15 incident, you’re likely dealing with a mess of insurance claims involving your personal comprehensive coverage and the garage owner's liability policy. Most owners were eventually allowed to retrieve their cars after the Fire Department spent days building "wood shoring"—basically massive wooden towers—to keep the ceiling from falling any further.
Keep an eye on the city's building department portal if you're curious about where you park. You can actually check if the garage you use daily has a valid, up-to-date Parking Garage Assessment Report (PGAR). It’s public record, and after what happened on Hale Avenue, it’s worth the five-minute search.
Check your own garage's status by visiting the White Plains Building Department website or the New York Department of State's building code division to see recent filings. If you spot significant cracks or falling chunks of concrete in any public or private deck, call it in to the city's code enforcement line immediately.