The giant tour bus that has been sticking upright out of a parking garage in North New Hyde Park for three days is finally gone. A gaping hole remains.
On Friday morning at 4:00 a.m., the M&V Limousine tour bus, whose back end fell through a parking lot into the parking garage beneath it Tuesday evening, June 24, around 5:23 p.m., was pulled out with a crane.
Umberto Mignardi, communications director for the Town of North Hempstead, where the 1979 Marcus Ave. garage is located, said it took so long to extract the bus because nearby trees and a fence had to be cut down to make space for the crane necessary to pull the bus out.
Additionally, he said self-propelled crawler cranes, the type of crane necessary for the extraction, are difficult to find and expensive.
Mignardi said the building’s owners, 1979 Marcus Km LLP are responsible for all costs associated with extracting the bus, hiring engineers, and making the necessary repairs. However, the town has been involved to ensure there are no public safety concerns and to help secure the area while extraction preparation and efforts were underway.
The driver had chosen to drive up onto the surface lot above the garage while waiting to pick up his passengers, a group of Mets season ticket holders whom he would drive to a game.
After parking the bus, the surface lot gave way and sank under the weight of the bus, dropping it into the parking garage below.
Mignardi said the driver’s choice to park where he did was completely legal and that he did nothing wrong.
The town said its building department thinks the excessive heat that day may have caused the lot to sink under the bus, but engineers are still working to determine the cause. The portion of the lot and garage that the bus fell into will remain closed indefinitely.
Mignardi emphasized that no one was hurt in the incident.
“There was nobody injured. The driver got off the bus. There were no passengers and no passerby,” Mignardi said. “There were a few cars in that area underneath, but it’s not a well-used part of the garage. There was no damage to any of the vehicles.”
Mignardi said the town sent building inspectors to check the structural integrity of nearby buildings out of an abundance of caution after the incident and did not find any issues.
