mold-symptom.com

A sick building gets a death sentence.

The city of Terre Haute decided Wednesday afternoon that the empty Lakeview Nursing Home should be torn down.

You may recall in May of 2002, the nursing home had to evacuate residents when flood waters rolled into the building.

Those residents weren't able to return because the building then became overgrown with mold.

Since then the city has condemned the building and after months of delays has finally pulled the trigger and told the Beverly Company to tear it down.

The old Lakeview Nursing Home is sick.

The windows are boarded up and the building has been diagnosed with mold.

The city says the place is terminal.

It needs to be torn down, but the people in charge believe they can make it healthy enough to bring it back to life.

No one has lived here for more than a year and it is full of mold.

Neighbors know the place has problems.

"You can tell there's mold," said Nathan Blacketer who lives nearby, "There's actually a lot of loose needles and stuff. A lot of broken glass. You can tell where people have broken in, but the mold is, it looks pretty bad."

The bad news about mold is that overexposure can have serious health effects including fever, breathing problems and rashes.

The good news is that mold dangers are limited to people who are inside the building.

That means the closed nursing home doesn't pose a direct threat to the kids at Ouabache School across the street.

Still folks are concerned.

"I think it's unsafe," said Lori Butts, a teacher's aid at the school, "I think there's a lot of mold in there and little kids around here and they could go in there because they're real inquisitive."

The Beverly Company says the building may be full of mold, but they want to repair it. But city officials say tearing it down is a better idea and will file an order to have it demolished.

The Beverly Company's lawyers got that message from the city during a hearing.

They may end up in court to clean it up.

Either way, folks here might finally get what they want.

"Tear it down if they can and put something else there or make it so it's not so hazardous," said Butts.

If the fate of the building lands in court, odds are it won't get cleaned up or torn down anytime soon.

So people in the neighbourhood will be left with many more months of waiting for a sick building to get treated or terminated.