L&I acted quickly to demolish a Strawberry Mansion house after a partial collapse Thursday night. Residents were surprised.

It wasn’t until 10 p.m. Thursday night that Stephanie Harrell heard the house next door fall. Her grandson, in the back room of the two-story house, had heard earlier rumblings but wasn’t sure what it was. Neither his grandmother nor mother, Sabrina Harrell, who were downstairs watching television in the front living room, heard anything earlier.

And then bricks from the back of the house at 2503 North 29th St. in Strawberry Mansion came raining down.

The house was vacant at the time of the collapse and no one was injured.

Both the fire and police departments came quickly after the 911 call, but it was what happened next that surprised Harrell and her neighbors. The quick response from the city’s Department of Licenses and Inspections.

Harrell’s neighbors began to ask her who she had to call to get action.

What Harrell and her neighbors were witnessing was the Department of L&I emergency services unit in action.

“The police said they would stay until L&I came and they were here within five to ten minutes,” said Harrell.

L&I created the unit to respond to the city’s most dangerous buildings in the aftermath of the fatal June 2013 Salvation Army collapse in Center City, where a 30-foot wall from a building being demolished collapsed onto the Salvation Army Thrift Store next door, at 22nd and Market Streets, killing seven people and injuring 13.

In this instance, Harrell saw the team in action.

By midnight, L&I inspectors had declared the property eminently dangerous but told the Harrells they could remain in their house. A demolition contract was put out to bid on Friday morning when preapproved demolition contractors assembled for a curbside bidding process.

The winning contractor started taking the house down that same afternoon, quickly removing a potential hazard. The work is expected to be completed Monday.

According to the emergency procedures, the owner, listed as ARM LLC, with an address in the 3000 block of Fletcher Street, will be billed for all costs incurred by the city, including administrative fees. Harrell said ARM LLC was a responsive owner, sending someone out quickly when she complained once of water seeping into her basement from the empty house.

On Friday, Mayor Cherelle L. Parker and members of her administration held a news conference on the 29th Street corridor to press her agenda to rid the city of blight, nuisance businesses, and illegal dumping to improve the quality-of-life in highly impacted neighborhoods.

“You watch us. we’re going to enforce the law here,” she told reporters.

» READ MORE: Mayor Cherelle Parker pledges crackdown on illegal dumping and abandoned cars: ‘We’re going to enforce the law’

Harrell recalled that numerous attempts had been made to repair the house over the years. “They redid the porch but it always sunk down. I don’t know what was wrong. They couldn’t get it sturdy.” Harrell’s parents were one of the first African Americans to move onto the block in the 1950s, the start of four generations of Harrells who have lived on the block.

Earlier this month, Parker announced she was dividing the Department of Licenses and Inspections into two separate agencies, another recommendation that came as a result of the 2013 collapse.

» READ MORE: Mayor Cherelle L. Parker will split up the Department of Licenses and Inspections

“They’re moving fast,” Harrell said of L&I. “We are blessed. The situation could have been a lot worse.”