So my childhood home just collapsed in on itself ...

One dead, two injured in a home collapse in New Jersey. No explosion, no warning, not even any damage to the building next door. The thing just caved in on itself at 7 a.m. Monday and pancaked.
RIP to the deceased and Godspeed to her two teenage daughters.
My family lived in this house for a few years when I was in high school. It's bizarre to see part of your old third-floor bedroom sitting on the sidewalk, picking out various parts of the house, and being able to picture exactly where these people were in the house when it collapsed and why one person was pretty much able to walk out of the rubble and the others had to be pulled out.

Mom killed, 2 daughters injured in house collapse in Hamilton

 

Wow. That is pretty messed up. I couldn’t even imagine if my childhood home vanished. I don’t even like the fact that the new owners took out the shrubs and pool.

 

Really strange. I cannot see how a house would collapse without warning if there wasn't an explosion.

 

I can't see how anyone survived.

 

That was a three-storey house? Has to be a sinkhole, right? It looks like it's disappeared into a cavity in the ground.

Sorry, @Batman. I can understand how that would be extremely messed up to see.

 

Yeah, three stories. The window with the AC unit in it that's in a lot of the pictures was the front of my bedroom on the third floor, at the front of the house. It was a converted attic/bonus room.
Amazingly, the back porch is completely intact. I guess it wasn't connected to the house and was an add-on, and I never realized it when we lived there.

No sinkhole or explosion as far as they know so far. The thing simply fell down and pancaked on itself. Houses aren't supposed to do that.
The building next door and the back porch were both undamaged it looks like. There were also two billboards in the side yard that appear to have been dinged but are still standing. The way the house was set up, the back bedroom had nothing above it. The person who was back there was half buried in rubble but pretty much walked out of it once she was freed. The person that died was in the front bedroom that the top of the house would have fallen in on.

We hadn't lived there in 20 years. I think my parents moved out in 1999. It's more surreal than anything. That's the last house we lived in before I moved out on my own. I used to drive past it when I'd go home to visit, and it's weird thinking it's just ... not there anymore.

 

My childhood home was torn down about two weeks after my parents sold it.

My mom still refuses to drive by the site, almost two decades later.

 

My parents live in a very nice 100-year old bungalow-style house on a large hillside lot in a very desirable Orange County neighborhood.

Whenever they sell, the bulldozers will be rolling up within hours.

 

My childhood home in Long Beach Ca. The front yard was remodeled somewhat. The main lawn is where we'd play baseball. The tree wasn't there.

 

I once wrote a short story about a man whose childhood home became an adult bookstore. I just thought that'd be the most fucked-up thing to return to.

Where I'm from, lots of people's family farms are now Wal-Marts or toll roads or Dollar Generals.

 

Guy I used to work with years grew up in a motel (his family owned it). They sold just after he went away to college. When he came back to see it, he realized a high amount of prostitutes had set up shop. He hired one to for the evening in his old bedroom.

 

AAA or rack rate?