At age 70, Anna Allejandro never thought she would get into the construction business.
But as a water pipe leak turned her plaster walls into moldy, mildewed mush, her landlord left her no choice but to hang sheetrock, replaster, repaint and retile her apartment.
After the wall broke three times, "I fixed it," an irate Allejandro said last Thursday, pointing to a repaired portion of her bathroom wall that now looks more like the rolling sands on a beach. "That's a leak they refuse to fix," she added.
Just two months after a three-foot long concrete slab fell from another Barnes Avenue building, and two weeks after a wall of a neglected building in Harlem collapsed, killing three tenants, residents throughout the borough worry that their building could be next.
Vahe Tiryakian, a spokesman for the city's Buildings Department, said Bronx residents need not be alarmed.
"We expect a heightened sensibility as a result of what happened," he said. "But what happened in Manhattan, in Harlem, is unusual."
Since the building on West 140th Street collapsed, the department has received 10 complaints of structural damage in the Bronx, Tiryakian said.
Throughout the year, borough residents wait on long lines in housing court to demand repairs from landlords. In the 12 months starting from February 1994, 2,306 tenants filed complaints ranging from rats to cracked walls and ceilings, according to housing court records.
Last year, residents of 1055 Grand Concourse narrowly averted a Harlem-like disaster when cracks as Wide as three-and-a-half inches in the rear wall caused the five-story brick building to shake.
Firefighters banged on doors and told residents to get out before it collapsed, said Ruth Santos, 37, who lives on the second floor with her eight children.
"The first thing I told the kids is, grab your coats and meet me at the corner," said Santos, who stayed to grab diapers and bottles for her 6-month-old son.
Although most residents returned to their homes the following day, cooking gas was not restored for six months, said Santos, who formed the 1055 Tenants Association after the near disaster.
Residents settled a suit against the landlord in December and were granted a rebate equivalent to nine weeks of rent.
While the association works closely with the building management to make needed repairs, Santos said residents still hold their breath when a fire truck passes.
"A lot of tenants still feel panicky," she said.
Meanwhile, Allejandro and her neighbors in the six buildings Prince Management Co. owns on Barnes Avenue in the Pelham Parkway area repeatedly demanded service. In the past three years, they reported more than 900 violations to the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development, said Hazel Miura, a tenant organizer with the Neighborhood Initiative Development Corporation.
Few of the violations -- leaks, rats and crumbling brickwork -- were corrected, said Miura. As a result, residents such as Allejandro were forced to make repairs themselves. They submit bills to Prince, which collects more than $1 million a year in rent from its Barnes Avenue tenants, and hope for reimbursement.
Solomon Steimetz, who manages the buildings for Prince, would not comment on specific repairs. "We're doing all we can right now," Steimetz said.
Prince's owner, Moshe Singer, did not respond to requests for an interview.
Recently, Nelson Rodriguez, a butcher who lives at 2146 Barnes Ave., discovered a two-inch crack in the floor as he replaced a section in his front doorway. When he flashed a light into the crack, he could see clear through to the second floor.
"I cemented the part that I could," he said. "But the whole thing's going to come down."
But Rodriguez said the bricks and slate falling from the roof onto a courtyard where children often play is his most pressing concern.
"If you're under there, you're not even going to feel the hit."