Workers Get Holiday When Ceiling Collapses

About 25 employees at a men’s clothing warehouse in Vernon were told to take the day off and 75 others were briefly evacuated Thursday after the ceiling above them collapsed during reroofing work, triggering a shower of water and plaster flakes that delayed shipments and damaged merchandise, authorities said. No one was injured.

“I was in the front office, and I felt some rumbling in the back,” said Al Zubrinsky, manager of Touch U.S.A.’s 50,000-square-foot warehouse in the 2400 block of East 38th Street. “People thought it was an earthquake.”

The shaking occurred about 11:45 a.m. when a 40-foot-by-40-foot patch of roof along the one-story building’s east wall caved in, said Battalion Chief Arnold DeBoer of the Vernon Fire Department. Wooden beams supporting the roof might have weakened and buckled under the strain of heavy roofing materials that were stacked atop the building, DeBoer said.

Damage estimates were incomplete Thursday, but Zubrinsky said some merchandise suffered water damage when the collapse set off an emergency sprinkler system. Also, he said the building’s distribution area was declared unsafe for work, and the company was unable to send out shipments of its men’s clothing for the rest of the day.