A house near North Miro and St. Anthony Streets in the Seventh Ward neighborhood of New Orleans came crashing down shortly before noon on Monday.
Sharon Norbert heard the building collapsing next door and ran out of her house.
"I was inside cooking and the only thing I heard was BOOM and all this just collapsed," Norbert said.
There was no electrical meter on the house and it didn't appear anyone had been living there for quite some time.
Norbert said she heard timbers in the building cracking early Monday morning.
"It fell a week before last with all the hard wind," Norbert said. "It was collapsing then. This morning, this done happened."
Farrell Davis is renovating houses on the block.
"My expression, truthfully, damn, I told you so and that's how it went," Davis said.
Davis watched the building come down.
"This morning, we passed a comment about if a good hard wind comes, this house is going to collapse," Davis said. "About 20 minutes later, where I'm at right now, I'm talking with my workers and the wind blew and all we heard was a crumble and I just saw it falling apart."
Neighbors complain they called the city's 311 help line numerous times to report the poor condition of the building, but nothing was ever done.
"They kept telling me it's on the list," Norbert said. "That's all they kept telling me."
Norbert said she knew the building would collapse "sooner or later."
New Orleans firefighters responded to the building collapse.
The house was expected to be condemned and torn down by the city.
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