Eight injured as toy store roof collapses
At least eight people, including a three-year-old, were injured in the US when a toy store roof collapsed following a week of heavy snow and rain.
Authorities the collapse of the roof on the Toys ‘R’ Us store in Lanham, Maryland, yesterday was a “disaster waiting to happen” in an area soaked by heavy rain following the week’s blizzards.
Fire Chief Ronald Blackwell said the injured people were taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Authorities had feared others were trapped inside the 45,000sq ft building, but rescuers found no one in an initial search and police reported no missing person calls, officials said.
Firefighters were planning another search, but Prince George’s County Executive Jack Johnson said he remained “cautiously optimistic” that everyone in the store was able to escape.
Around 90% of the Toys ‘R’ Us roof fell in, all the way from the cash registers to the back of the store, Prince George’s County Fire Department spokesman Mark Brady said.
Doretea Burton was with her mother and two children, a one-year-old boy and seven-year-old girl, shopping for a high chair when she heard “a roaring sound”.
“You could see the sky beams falling and beams bent,” said Ms Burton, 29. “For a moment we all thought we were going to die.”
All 10 employees in the building at the time of the collapse were unharmed. Store manager Mike Molnar said he did not know how many customers were in the building, but Ms Burton estimated there were about 50.
Ms Burton said she heard screams and saw one woman with a bloodied head. She said she and her family had to walk circles around the rubble to get out.
“The roof was coming down as we ran. It was like it was following us,” she said.
Mr Brady said the combination of the flat roof on the free-standing toy store and recent snow and rain created a ”disaster waiting to happen”.
The accident was the worst of several roof collapses in Maryland and Virginia, which also saw some flooding after heavy rain followed snow earlier in the week that reached more than 2ft in some places.
The roof of an elementary school in Herndon, Virginia, collapsed yesterday, Fairfax County officials said. The school was empty at the time.
