Family of Hard Rock Hotel collapse victims still seeking answers in New Orleans, as Surfside begins

Publish date: 2024-07-08

Irene Wimberly waited 10 months to get her son’s remains back from the rubble of a collapsed high-rise construction site. For nearly a year, his legs stuck out of the New Orleans building’s 11th floor, covered only by a tarp.

When Wimberly finally laid her head down on the black body bag, she rubbed it with her left cheek. “All I could feel was bones.”

Nearly a year later, she says she is still waiting for something that feels like justice in the death of Quinnyon Wimberly, one of three men killed Oct. 12, 2019, as they worked on the 18-story Hard Rock Hotel.

“I was up in my den, looking at pictures,” Irene, 69, said. “And I still ask myself why, and I’ll probably never get answers.”

As a massive search for victims comes to a close at the site of a collapsed Surfside, Fla., condo building, the Wimberlys know the shock of tragedy, the agony of waiting for a body — or whatever is left of it — and the likely far-longer quest for closure and accountability that comes next. They have been through some version of what faced and now faces families in Florida, where authorities are just starting to process lawsuits and dissect the failure of Champlain Towers South.

Search for Florida condo collapse victims nears end as more bodies are identified

In New Orleans, the aftermath has been “pain and trauma being heaped on top of pain and trauma,” said Jason Williams, the Orleans Parish district attorney, who served on the city council at the time of the collapse. It shows how long and complicated the recovery from a building collapse can be, even when the death toll is in single digits rather than Surfside’s nearly 100.

Investigations into the Hard Rock construction nightmare are still pending; calls for criminal consequences are still hanging; litigation is still working through the courts. The last of the rubble was cleared from the city’s historic French Quarter only in April, as streets slowly reopened around a barren lot fenced with chain-link.

What happens to the lot now is unclear. The developer has been pushing to start anew on a hotel, while the Wimberlys can only think about the mess of concrete, steel and human remains that once sat there.

“I will lay down in front of that building,” said Quinnyon’s brother Frank Wimberly, 47, a trucker from Atlanta. “I will lay down in front of that building … I refuse to sit here in Atlanta and allow them to build that building back.”

Waiting for a body

Quinnyon, a longtime construction worker and supervisor, had gone into work on a Saturday to prepare for a big inspection, his family said. At 36 years old, he had two young sons and a lot to look forward to. He was trying to start his own plumbing business. Eight days earlier, he had gotten engaged.

Then shortly after 9 a.m. on Oct. 12, floors pancaked down on each other. A huge slab of the unfinished hotel fell forward onto the street as clouds of white dust billowed up and pedestrians sprinted away.

Quinnyon was still missing when Frank got to New Orleans two days later. More than a dozen workers had been seriously injured; one man’s body was retrieved. Leaving his hotel at 4 a.m. to stand alone outside the wreckage, Frank prayed: “I didn’t pray that my brother was still alive,” he said. “I prayed that he was not suffering.”

Soon, he said, authorities asked Quinnyon’s fiancee, a police detective officer, to go get Quinnyon’s toothbrush and razor. “She knows what that means,” said Frank Wimberly, who also used to work in law enforcement. “They found a body.”

But the pileup around Quinnyon was unstable, officials said. Slabs of the building hung down, threatening to injure anyone who tried to reach him in a bucket truck. Frank remembers an old friend in the fire department pleading for patience: “When I tell you we can’t get up there to get him, we can’t get him.”

So Quinnyon’s fate was entwined with that of the building.

The city and the site developer clashed for months over the best and safest way forward, as the bodies of Quinnyon Wimberly and another worker, Jose Ponce Arreola, remained stuck. When a tarp that hid Quinnyon’s legs blew off one day, family said, people snapped pictures. One New Orleans teacher recalled students talking about it in her class.

Then on Aug. 8, 2020, the Wimberlys got the final call. Assembled in the coroner’s office, they asked: Where was Quinnyon’s head?

Irene Wimberly remembers gently laying her face down on what she believed to be her son’s. She cried.

“I can’t leave him here by himself,” she said.

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Quinnyon’s ashes sit in an urn in her living room, on a shelf in the middle of the fireplace. Above is his picture, she said. A boot he wore when he died is there, too, in a glass case.

‘In our heads it’s still loud’

To the Wimberlys, the pace of accountability remains painfully slow, even as authorities assure the public they are still working. Last month, the family spoke alongside a New Orleans City Council member at a news conference calling for information to swiftly go before prosecutors.

Also there was Angela Magrette, the twin sister of another victim.

“We live a constant day, every day, of what happened here,” said Magrette, who lost her brother Anthony Magrette.

“Even though it gets quiet, in our heads it’s still loud,” she said.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration last year bolstered the Wimberlys’ belief that the companies involved in construction bear blame. The federal agency cited an engineering firm, a general contractor, a steel erector and many more subcontractors for health and safety violations at the Hard Rock site.

Heaslip Engineering in particular, OSHA said, committed a “willful violation” related to steel bolt connections that affected the building’s “structural integrity.” The company did not respond to multiple calls and emails requesting comment.

Scrutinized after the collapse, some city inspectors accused of falsifying their Hard Rock site reports resigned ahead of termination proceedings, according to local news reports.

“While the City was not responsible for the design or construction of the failed Hard Rock Hotel building, the City supports the ongoing [Office of Inspector General] investigation and will fully support the District Attorney in holding any and all responsible persons accountable to the fullest extent of the law,” a city hall spokesperson said in a statement.

Kerry Miller, a lawyer for the developer, 1031 Canal Development, noted that OSHA did not cite the firm, which is suing the city and other companies involved. “At no point did anybody raise any structural issues with the developer,” Miller said, adding that they are “absolutely concerned” about reports that workers noted and filmed worrying signs in the days before collapse.

He declined to comment on the Wimberlys’ opposition to a new hotel. The New Orleans City Council voted last month to move toward rescinding a permit that allowed the Hard Rock site to be built 18 stories high. The developer protested — plans for a high-rise were still underway.

Williams, the Orleans Parish district attorney, says his office is waiting for a report from the city’s Office of Inspector General and final findings from OSHA. The U.S. Department of Labor said Friday that OSHA cannot discuss open investigations. Edward Michel, the interim inspector general, said his office will send its report on city employees’ conduct to prosecutors “shortly” and added that there has been a “refocus” on the Hard Rock investigation since he took over last fall.

In an interview, Williams expressed frustration at what he characterized as long delays.

When the reports come in, he said, “we will be working against the clock.”

Frank Wimberly said he wants someone to go to prison. This wasn’t an “incident,” he says. “This is a murder … This was negligence.”

But he said he is wary of speaking too “emotionally” in interviews. “I don’t want to get frustrated when things [don’t] go our way,” he said. And now events in Surfside have “brought everything back fresh,” Irene Wimberly said.

She has spent almost two years talking about her son’s death — doing occasional interviews, appealing for consequences — but sometimes it still feels too painful to put into words. Half an hour into a conversation with a reporter, she finally said to call Frank for all the details.

“I just don’t want to talk about it any more,” she said.

What will become of the land the Surfside condo is on?

Wreckage from TWA Flight 800 to be destroyed 25 years after crash

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Family of Hard Rock Hotel collapse victims still seeking answers in New Orleans, as Surfside begins

Waiting for a body

‘In our heads it’s still loud’