Mall Shoppers Narrowly Miss Injury as Awning Falls

A heavy concrete-and-steel awning in front of Robinson’s department store at busy University Towne Centre collapsed without warning onto the sidewalk Friday, narrowly missing several shoppers and spewing a bomb-like cloud of dust and debris into the parking lot.

At first, authorities were told at least two people were trapped, including a mother and child. They rushed dozens of firefighters to the scene and commandeered a forklift from an adjacent residential construction project to help lift large sections of twisted steel and beige stucco.

But, soon after the 1:13 p.m. crash, fire officials determined no one was under the wreckage, estimated by authorities to weigh 1 1/2 to 2 tons.

When the thundering collapse occurred, a woman ran to the parking lot while her child ran in the other direction, into the department store. Their separation was a cause of brief official worry, fueling fears that one of them was trapped. But police tracked down the unidentified mother and child.

Another possible victim, described only as an older man, was also accounted for.

“This could have been a major disaster,” said fire Capt. Al Macdonald. “You have people who could have been coming back from lunch, a lot of shoppers around. . . . We were very fortunate.”

Officials don’t know what caused the approximately 1,000-square-foot section on the west side of the store to give way. Inspectors from the city building department were on the scene late in the afternoon to begin their investigation.

There was no construction or major work being done to the overhang, and the only recent activity had been some roofing repairs, said Macdonald, adding that the work involved the surface and not the underpinnings of the awning, which hung about 30 to 40 feet from the ground.

The awning, wide enough for a person to walk across, held the large Robinson’s sign, which lay buried under the rubble. While firefighters carefully dug through the debris on one side, the store remained open and customers continued shopping.

“The building is secure,” said Karen Fuller, manager of the 144,000-square-foot store that opened in 1977. She and other store officials gathered in the parking lot, surrounded by curious onlookers, and surveyed the scene.

About two hours after the fall, a crack high on the left side of the entrance, above a series of 30 large metal bells stretching from the ground to nearly the roof, was noticed, causing officials to quickly expand the cordoned-off area.

But, except for the many fire engines, police cars and shopping center security personnel clustered in front of the wreckage, it was business as usual throughout the huge upscale mall in University City on the bright, warm spring day.

Although no one was seriously injured, about a half dozen people near or under the awning had the scare of a lifetime.

One was Missy Hunt, a 17-year-old from La Jolla who was leaving the department store.

“I heard this crash, and my first instinct was to run,” she said, still shaken nearly an hour after the crash. The force of the concrete and metal hitting the sidewalk threw her to the pavement in the parking lot.

“I flew 10 feet from where it fell,” Hunt said. She landed on her knees and palms. Paramedics put a small bandage on her left knee.

Tracy Vonspaeth, 21, and her friend, Teresa Leek, were on the sidewalk about 30 feet from the store entrance when the canopy crashed.

“I saw the roof start to sag a little bit and then I heard this big noise. . . . I saw a man run back toward the door, and then it fell,” Vonspaeth said. “That was the last person I saw under it.”

Added Leek, “We were almost right under it. It sounded like a bomb going off.”

That’s exactly how Brad Schluter, a 32-year-old stockbroker at the nearby Shearson Lehman Hutton office saw it.

On a lunch-hour stroll, Schluter saw the right side of the awning start to fall, and almost the rest of the structure collapsed. “If you hadn’t seen the thing drop. . . . it looked like a bomb had gone off in the store,” with dust and debris billowing into the parking lot.

“It didn’t come down flat,” he said. “It swayed a little bit. . . . “I saw three people running out, and then a bunch of people started yelling to call 911.”

One of the most surprised people was forklift driver Brad Wymer, and he wasn’t even there.

Wymer, who works for J and B Materials in El Cajon, was unloading drywall from a truck at a residential construction site about a mile east of the shopping center on Renaissance Avenue, off of Town Centre Drive.

The Fire Department came by and asked for his help. The next he knew, Wymer was in the middle of the action, sitting in his big machine as firefighters scurried around him, looking under wreckage lifted by his vehicle’s powerful tines.