Spearfish Wal-Mart roof collapses

By Kevin Woster, Journal staff | Saturday, November 15, 2008

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SPEARFISH -- When the Wal-Mart roof started to groan and creak early Thursday morning, employees made a wise decision: They got out.

The roof didn't collapse entirely, but it shifted enough under tons of heavy, wet snow to cause the outside wall to buckle noticeably and the roof itself to sag down five or six feet.

"It started at about 6:15 this morning, when there was a popping sound in the roof," store manager Tom Jones said a few hours later. "And my assistant manager immediately evacuated the store."

It was the second time in 21/2 years that snow caused a partial collapse of the roof. And this one came in almost the same area, in the southeast part of the 212,000-square-foot roof. Last time, however, the sag knocked out power to freezers and ruined frozen and refrigerated foods in the grocery area.

It also shut down the store for three days. And it took more than two months to get the store back to 100-percent operation. It cost about $1 million to repair the damage, reconstruct the failed area and replace the lost merchandise in 2006, Jones said.

He's hoping for better this time.

"I've still got power. And our freezers aren't down," Jones said. "I don't anticipate the loss of food being nearly as much this time."

Jones said the store would remain closed through the day Thursday, and he wasn't sure when it would reopen.

A crane owned by Ainsworth Benning Construction of Spearfish was several hours late for a scheduled trip to Pluma to help cut a 54-foot Christmas tree for the Capitol Rotunda in Pierre. The crane's priority Thursday morning was to help scoop snow off the Wal-Mart roof.

Each scoop hit the parking lot on the east side of the building in a small explosion of white, slushy slop as Jones spoke to reporters nearby.

Wal-Mart employees had been monitoring the roof after last week's blizzard to assure that the drains were working properly. There was no indication of a problem, Jones said.

The sag area was about 60 feet long and 40 feet wide. The snowpack left from the blizzard, coupled with an early morning rain on Thursday, seemed to combine to cause the failure, Spearfish Volunteer Fire Department Chief Pat Kellogg said.

"We got the radio call just before 6:30. With the snow we had, this was my first thought," Kellogg said. "The biggest thing was we already had the snow up there and then got that rain, and I think the snow was like a big sponge up there."

Emergency crew members blocked off the parking lot and kept the public away while the construction crews worked to remove some of the snow from the problem area on the roof. They also ran a pump to get rid of some of the water that had collected around the snow.

Jones said he wasn't aware of other Wal-Mart stores having similar problems with snow damage on their roofs.

Some water leaked into the store this time. But a rubber membrane under the roof held, so the roof didn't fall into the store. Jones is hoping the overall damage will be less than in 2006.

"But we'll have to see," he said.

Contact Kevin Woster at 394-8413 or kevin.woster@rapidcityjournal.com