I suppose there are times when you wish the floor would open up and swallow the preacher… but this was different. In Abbotsford (near Vancouver) BC on the weekend, during a Starfield concert at a local church, the floor collapsed — or part of it did, rather: a gaping hole opened up in front of the stage where a number of teens were dancing. They fell through the 24′ hole into the basement, injuring more than 40 of them. CTV has photos of the floor as it collapsed, and the CBC story includes links to video, including a little over 15 minutes of B-roll. Most of the injured were treated and released, but one woman is in an induced coma.
Friends of ours were out with friends for dinner and a movie, when they got a call while standing in line for tickets at the theatre — it was their daughter, calling to say the floor at the concert she was hat had collapsed and she had fallen through into the basement, breaking the fall for a couple of bigger boys. She was taken by ambulance to Langley Memorial Hospital. Turns out she has broken one of the bones in her leg and sprained her other foot. Our friends ended up sitting around the hospital for about four hours with their daughter’s friends.
Another friend of theirs were up in the balcony that evening — he reports that a bunch of kids including his daughter were up at the front dancing in unison, when two sound and lighting towers came crashing down into the crowd. He says, “At the same time the floor with all these kids on it seemed to disappear. The place went from excited screaming to horrified screaming instantly.” The floor had water gushing in from a broken water pipe, and there were electrical wires dangling in the opening. He made his way down to the front to find his daughter, and helped stack pews away from the edge of the hole. Returning to the lobby, he saw kids sprawled out with various injuries, some in shock. He found his daughter there, comforting kids and making sure her friends were safe. She reported that the floor in front of her “just disappeared.”
This is a most unusual event to say the least. It reminds me a little of the charismatic Baptist church I attended for a year or so. It was a big old church building, and people used to dance in the sanctuary during worship. Always in unison, and you could literally feel a bit of spring in the floor as it bounced in time with the music and dancing. When it got too much, one of the pastors would stop and ask some people to dance on the opposite beat… which didn’t really work, but it broke the momentum of the bouncing. Finally they had to have structural engineers take a look. Within a few years more, the church went through some changes and isn’t quite so boisterous in their charismatic expression anymore. Maybe it’s for the best.
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