After car sinks into hole in East St. Louis road, activists call for action on infrastructure
Darius Edwards watched his car sink into an East St. Louis street on the Fourth of July.
Edwards, 46, is a lifelong resident of East St. Louis. He drove a short distance July 4 to visit with neighbors on North 32nd Street. He parked and walked over to chat with one of them on a porch when the street buckled. The car went down slowly at first, but within about 14 seconds, Edwards said it disappeared.
“It’s just a blessing that I wasn’t in the car,” he said Saturday.
Edwards recounted the moment at a news conference with residents from the neighborhood and activists from two local grassroots organizations, who are calling on leaders to monitor and fix the city’s roads and other infrastructure in the wake of Edwards’ dramatic experience.
Officials from the city and its water company say the North 32nd Street hole was a rare incident: Edwards had unknowingly parked on top of a leaking water main, which was repaired the same day. The water company’s insurance is working on fixing or replacing the car.
Terry Mackin, a spokesperson for the city’s utility company Illinois American Water, said in a statement that the water main break could have been caused by that weekend’s extremely hot weather. (Mackin also writes a monthly column for the Belleville News-Democrat.)
The residents and community organizers who gathered Saturday at the site of the hole expressed concern that decades of flooding issues and a lack of resources have resulted in eroded infrastructure.
They also noted the damaged portion of the road was covered in gravel and blocked off to cars but not yet repaired five days after the incident. They said other holes in the city’s roads have been around longer.
“It’ll sit like this for months and then years unrepaired,” said Larita Rice-Barnes, executive director of the Metro East Organizing Coalition. “We are concerned about this.”
Resident Belinda Stidimire believes nearby Ohio Avenue, for instance, has been uneven from holes for a couple years.
East St. Louis Mayor Robert Eastern III said in response to Saturday’s calls for action that city officials are working to come up with a comprehensive infrastructure plan and to secure funding for it.
“A lot of things that people don’t see is happening behind the scenes,” Eastern said in an interview. “Just bear with us, and we’re going to do our part to make it better.”
JD Dixon, director of the grassroots organization Empire 13, said during the news conference that he would also like to see East St. Louis get rid of vacant properties in the city.
One towering example is the Spivey building, a vacant 12-story skyscraper on Missouri Avenue that has at times dropped bricks, mortar and other debris onto the streets below from deterioration.
Demolition has been discussed since at least 2018, according to Belleville News-Democrat reporting at the time.
Eastern said Saturday that the planned demolition of the Spivey building has been delayed by liability concerns related to an adjacent building. “In the next several months, we’ll see some movement on that,” Eastern said.
The message from residents and activists at Saturday’s news conference was that they want to see the city move faster to address its infrastructure.
Dixon said he does not think residents in Belleville or Fairview Heights endure the same long-term hassles such as gravel-filled holes in their streets.
“We demand the same equity down here in East St. Louis and in predominantly Black communities all across Illinois,” Dixon said.
This story was originally published July 10, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
