HALL ROOF COLLAPSES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18444, 4 January 1922, Page 6

HALL ROOF COLLAPSES

FIVE HUNDRED PEOPLE IN DANGER. MANY BURIED IN WRECKAGE. " DRAMATIC END TO CONCERT. While over 500 people were listening to a concert in the Temperance Hall, Walsall, England, the roof collapsed with fatal results. A member of a troupe of pierrots was singing a song entitled “Where Shall We Be in a Hundred Years?” and was in the middle of the line “You shall not be hero and wo shall not be here” when the crash came. . ' There was on ominous cracking; then tons of woodwork and plaster fell on the audience, and the hall was plunged into darkness. Besides tho roof, a portion of the gallery near the stage crashed down. A wild panic followed. Terror-stricken women and children, with faces blackened with dust and clothing torn, rtished for the doors and fought their way into the street. Many wore buried under the wreckage, and the absence of light made the work of rescue very difficult. Doctors and nurses were quickly on the scene, and the fire brigade, under the chief constable, also turned out to help. Several members of the audience were seriously injured, and there were removed to hospital in motors, while others,were treated in the Y.M.O.A. building opposite the hall. Mrs Elizabeth Drew, of Bath road, Walsall, died in hospital from spinal injuries. , “This was the first concert' we had attended since our courting days,” said, her husband. “She was conscious to within a short time of her death, and told me what occurred.’ She was sitting with a son and a girl friend named Lee not far from the stage, when there was a terrible crash. Down come tons of ceiling. Miss Lee’ managed Ito scramble from beneath the wreckage, but my wife was badly hurt, and our son was also out about the'"head.”

Another son stated that shortly before the start of tihe performance a quantity of plaster come down, and the stewards kept people away from that part of the hall. Another story of the accident is that one of the 'wooden principals supporting the roof, dislodged apparently through a wall of the l building bulging outwards. Fortunately, a massive beam in falling was caught by the balcony which runs round tihe hall, and remained fixed there. Had it fallen to the ground many lives would have been lost. A considerable number of the audience escaped by breaking the windows and crawling through the iron casements. Although scores ol people received injuries there were only seven hospital oases. , The hall is about 60 years old, and as it had recently been renovated it was deemed to bo quite safe. 4 It had lately been used as a Labour Exchange.