Update: Roof collapses at Blacksburg High School

Update: Sunday 2/14/2010

PRESS RELEASE:
Blacksburg High School’s gym roof collapses.

There were no activities going on at the time of the roof collapse. There were a few, limited number of people at the scene at the time of collapse that included school officials. Earlier in the day, an issue was noted with the gym ceiling, the building was evacuated and an engineer was called to inspect the structure.

There are structural engineers and building officials on site. Montgomery County Officials have been on the scene to coordinate the response to this incident.

Blacksburg Police, Fire and Rescue have been involved in a joint concerted effort in response to this incident. Searches of the site by Blacksburg Fire and Rescue have not produced any injured parties and from what we understand at this time, everyone is accounted for that was at the High School at the time of collapse.
The small animals used in the science and agriculture courses have been evacuated.
Fire and Rescue remain on the scene and Police will continue to secure the perimeter of the school.
Temporary fencing was installed around the site.
Officials continue to work on restoring utilities to the school building. Power has been restored to the main building.
The cause of the roof collapse was a structural failure that appears to be accidental in nature.
The school building was turned over to Montgomery County school officials at 12:30 am.

Saturday 2/13/2010:

"All of the sudden we heard a crash, and it sounded like snow falling off of a roof. We turned around and saw that the wall was falling and there were cinder blocks all over the floor." A scary situation for Lindsey Henderson. The Blacksburg High School junior was inside the gym with the rest of the girls basketball team during the initial stages of today's roof collapse. "Some girls ran completely out of the gym, and some of us just went to half court to get out of the way because we did not know what was happening", said Henderson. After that, a decision was made to clear out of the gym for safety reasons. It was a good thing, because less than two hours later, the gym ceiling collapsed.
Lt. Joe Davis with the Blacksburg Police Department tells me, so far everyone has been accounted for, and they don't believe anyone is inside. Blacksburg Fire and Rescue and the police department sealed off the area and proceeded with their investigation most of the afternoon.
Henderson certainly knows, she and her teammates were lucky today. While this will be tough for the school to deal with going foward, it could have been much worse. "We were all thinking, what if it would have happened last night when the guys were playing Christiansburg. Everyone from the town and all were there, so we were really lucky", said Henderson.
So far there has been no cause reported. There were basketball games scheduled for Monday night at the Blacksburg gym, but they will have to be moved to another location.