Parking garage partially collapses next to southeast Denver office building

Denver firefighters searched through a parking garage that partially collapsed on Monday afternoon.

The garage is part of a two-story building with rooftop parking in the 3600 block of S. Yosemite Street and is located next to a 10-story multi-tenant office building. The fire department confirmed that the garage partially collapsed around 3:30 p.m.

Multiple cars were crushed in the collapse. It's a scary visual knowing it could have been worse; nobody was injured.

"Our neighbor came in and said, the garage just collapsed, you need to get out of here," said Joy Sims, who works for a nonprofit and is brand new to the building.

"We're in the process of moving to this building, and we had just unpacked our last box," she added.

Denver Fire believes a girder (a concrete support bean) gave way below, trapping around 20 vehicles underground and more than a dozen on the surface lot.

Now, Sims and dozens of others won't be able to access their cars for the foreseeable future. Sims had to call her husband for a ride home.

"They said that the building is structurally sound so we can come to work tomorrow, but we just can't get our cars to go home."

Crews will now work to fully assess and secure the area.

"They don't want anything vibrating down there to make the collapse worse."

Denver fire did their job responding to the emergency and making sure everyone was okay Now, the rest of the work is in the hands of the building's owner and whoever they decide to hire to remedy the situation.