Residents evacuated from Tarentum apartment can return nearly a week after old opera house collapse

TARENTUM, Pa. — When the inside of the old opera house in Tarentum collapsed last week, 11 tenants in the next-door apartment building were told they could not go home. Now, almost a week later, they can return, but their fight isn’t over.

“I’m keeping all of my receipts,” tenant Matthew Yungwirth said. “My insurance will go after them. It doesn’t matter if it was a thunder strike. It doesn’t matter what it was. If a thunder strikes my car and it blows up and hits your car...You’re going to pay for it.”

The owner of the old opera house in downtown Tarentum told Channel 11 the building was struck by lightning during a storm last Wednesday night.

The borough manager said they were not worried about a further collapse but were concerned about this hole in the back of the building. That was the reason 11 tenants had to evacuate the apartment building next door for six days. Tenants, like Matthew Yungwirth, said they were forced to pay for a hotel.

“We’re all average joes living in this apartment. We don’t have the salary or hourly rate, I don’t think a lot of people do, to have a random vacation,” Yungwirth said. “It’s not a vacation paying all of this money. Paying hundreds and hundreds of dollars.”

Now tenants are allowed to return and the building owner said she has secured a contractor to repair the hole in the back of the building. She had previous plans to create a community center inside and said the lightning strike may have pushed her into continuing that dream.

“It could be an act of god that some stuff was already taken care of and publicity comes to this building. Publicity comes to this town and we get something accomplished that could not have been accomplished with a lightning strike,” building owner Cathy Blythe said.

Yungwirth told Channel 11 the borough already told the tenants it would not be paying for their costs of having to leave their homes, but Yungwirth said he and his fellow tenants shouldn’t have to pay.

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