20 Residents temporarily evacuate from The Ralston to escape cold rooms

About 20 residents temporarily evacuated from The Ralston on Thursday afternoon to escape cold hallways and rooms with temperatures barely higher that the outside high, a city official said Friday.

John Hudgison, director of the Inspections & Code Enforcement Department for the Consolidated Government, said those residents chose to voluntarily evacuate from the 211 12th St. facility where hot water and the heating system failed this week. Some rooms were left with temperatures in the low to mid 50s and hallways recorded 40 degrees.

The owner secured 70 rooms for residents to spend two days at the Motel 6 on Victory Drive. Hudgison hopes the time will allow New Jersey based owner, PF Ralston LLC, enough time to fix the heating system. Hot water has been restored in the building. The owner is facing a 9 a.m. Monday deadline to get the heating system completed.

By late Friday, Hudgison said the contractor working on the building believed the problem was with the central heating unit but work didn’t correct the problem. “Individual units are still not working,” he said. “That is varying between the heat pumps on the floor and malfunctioning thermostat. It’s just a lot of work for 188 different units that need to be looked at.”

With the deadline quickly approaching, Hudgison is concerned about seeing significant progress at the building. “That will be determined by Monday,” he said. “That’s all I can say.”

The code director said he would hate to condemn the whole building. He suggested it may be possible to close units where there is no heat as officials did during the summer when the air conditioning system failed. Residents were moved to areas where there was cool air.

“They assumed working on the main unit they would be good,” he said. “They worked on the main unit and there are still problems.”

Lacy Nichols said a technician came to her room Friday to check some settings on the unit. “My room was a comfortable 72 degrees,” she said.

Nichols was using the blower from her unit and a space heater in her room. The unit stopped and the temperature plunged to 60 degrees after some checks were conducted on the unit.

The room regained its heat after Nichols turned on the blower and the space heater.

This story was originally published January 5, 2018 at 7:05 PM with the headline "20 Residents temporarily evacuate from The Ralston to escape cold rooms."