Snow-Covered Roof of Skating Rink Collapses
The roof of the Ice Castle at Blue Jay, a skating rink west of Lake Arrowhead that has offered fresh ice and picturesque views to Olympians and the Los Angeles Kings alike, collapsed Wednesday, apparently done in by heavy snow.
There were no reports of injuries, though a chunk of the roof slid or fell into a nearby motor home park, damaging some homes, said San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Sgt. James DeLapp.
For the record:
12:00 a.m. Feb. 16, 2001 For the Record
Los Angeles Times Friday February 16, 2001 Home Edition Part A Part A Page 3 Metro Desk 2 inches; 44 words Type of Material: Correction
Ice rink--A file photograph accompanying a story Thursday about a collapsed roof at an ice rink incorrectly suggested that a training center operated by Ice Castle at Blue Jay was destroyed. The roof collapsed at a separate public rink nearby in the San Bernardino Mountains community, also operated by Ice Castle.
“The roof failed,” he said. “But we got lucky. Nobody was hurt.”
One manager was inside at the time but was not injured. The building, on the other hand, “is kaput,” Delapp said. “It is a total loss.”
The rink was closed at the time because employees couldn’t get to work in the snow, said Cindy Lang, public relations director for Ice Castle Inc.
“The entire roof is gone,” she said from her office in Santa Monica. “We would have been opened, had the snow been removed. Because the rink was kept closed, lives may have been saved.”
Lang said the snow that accumulated on the roof might have been responsible for its collapse.
“We’re assuming it was snow, but the roof was built to withstand more than what’s on it.”
The rink is in the unincorporated community of Blue Jay, just west of Lake Arrowhead in the San Bernardino National Forest.
The region had been hit in some spots with more than 2 feet of snow in the 24 hours before the accident.
The Ice Castle has a roof but no permanent walls, making it partly open to the elements.
Lang said the roof was supported by steel beams. Her mother, former ice skating star Carol Probst, built the rink, which opened in 1983.
“She said they had it engineered to withstand a blizzard that could never happen in California, so she’s really surprised,” Lang said.
The rink has become one of the top training centers in the United States. Michelle Kwan, who grew up in the mountain village of 600, trained there before winning an Olympic silver medal in 1998.
The NHL’s Kings have opened their training camp at Blue Jay in the past, and the rink has claimed as its artistic director Robin Cousins, the 1980 Olympic gold medalist.
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Associated Press contributed to this story.
