WEST TOWN — Construction crews set up concrete barriers Wednesday at McGrath Acura to begin the cleanup process after a side wall inside Morton Salt's storage facility blew out Tuesday afternoon, pushing some cars parked next door as far as 15 feet.
The salt buried at least 11 Acuras owned or being serviced by the McGrath Acura dealership next door.
"Right now, we are looking [at] 30 to 45 days before we can get this incident behind us," said McGrath Acura general manager Noble Jones. "We've been told by the city inspectors that the wall and the roof have been compromised. [Morton Salt] is going to have to do some things to restabilize it before we can start to tear the wall down and get the cars moved out."
Jones indicated it would take five or six days before cars would be removed from under the salt. After Tuesday's incident, some of the cars were pushed 13 or 15 feet closer to the McGrath Acura building, Jones said.
"We have set up a 10- or 20-foot barrier, and we are going to keep everyone away until we can get the city inspector back out on Monday."
In a statement, Mimi Simon, public affairs director for the city's Buildings Department, said "a preliminary inspection determined that salt inside the building structure was piled too high, causing the exterior wall to fail."
Eight of the cars damaged were at the dealer being serviced. Customers have been placed in loaner cars for the weekend at no expense, Jones added.
"We are waiting to speak with Morton Salt officials on how to go about replacing the vehicles damaged by this incident," Jones said.
"[Morton Salt's] insurance company came out and made some assessments based by photos and they will contact us on Monday as to what will be the next step to actually replace those cars," Jones added.
McGrath employees who were working in the area said the bricks started falling slowly before they heard a loud noise and the brick exterior collapsed.
"I heard a big boom," said 22-year-old Bernardo Macedo. "It sounded like a car accident, then the bricks from the top of the wall started to come down on top of the cars and the salt started to pour out."
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