YORK, Pa. (WHTM) -
For a year and a half, residents on Wallace Street in York have complained to the city about a strip of row homes that they say harbored animals and sometimes even criminals.
Tuesday, those walls finally fell.
"It was probably about the scariest morning of my entire life," said former resident, Katie White.
On the morning of April 26, 2011, White was eight months pregnant and alone with her two other children when a fire broke out in the kitchen of an adjoining row home.
"We got across the street and that's when the front window exploded," said White.
All got out safely, but her Wallace Street apartment was gutted and has sat in ruins ever since.
"He's one-and-a-half, and I was eight months pregnant with him at the time," White said of her son. "So, it's about time."
That's been the general consensus around these parts where this demolition has taken on a block party feel.
"Animals were hanging out inside the building and people were coming in and taking scrap metal in the middle of the night," said Bernard Anthony of Bernard Anthony Inc. Demolition.
Locals battled with the city over whose responsibility it was to tear down the buildings. It took 17 months and new ownership for action to be taken.
Six-twenty-four Wallace Street will soon become a parking lot for the nearby charter school and a page turned for White and her family.
