“When the lights started to shake, and when the canvas walls of the Dallas Cowboy’s practice facility started to blow apart, they knew this was no training drill…” (WFAA)That was video of the horrifying collapse of a Dallas Cowboys practice facility in Irving, Texas, captured by ABC affiliate WFAA.
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Extreme winds brought the eight-story tent-like structure to the ground during a rookie training session Saturday afternoon. (KDFW)Around 70 people were inside when the structure toppled down, and a dozen had to be hospitalized, including three Cowboys staffers.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports 33-year old scouting assistant, Rich Behm, was permanently paralyzed from the waist-down in the collapse. Another coach suffered a broken back without paralysis. (
StarTelegram.com)
ABC News gives the perspective of one photographer who experienced the harrowing collapse:
“It was like someone had taken a pin and stuck it in a balloon. Everything was falling.”
WFAA tells the story of another onlooker who suffered a fractured rib…
“And then the next thing I remember was looking up to the far right corner and I see everything lift up and split.” (WFAA)Some networks reported that a tornado had hit… but AccuWeather.com writes the damage was likely the result of a microburst--winds that violently drop from thunderstorms at speeds over sixty mph. (AccuWeather)ESPN broadcast this photo of the storm, sent from one Texas viewer. (ESPN)While the Dallas Morning News speculates whether the builder, Summit Structures, might share some of the blame.
“So was this building just in the wrong place at the wrong time? It's an odd thought, given that the whole point of the steel-framed, fabric-covered building is to give the team a place to practice in bad weather… A Summit-built warehouse in Pennsylvania partially collapsed during a 2003 snowstorm, less than two months after opening. A 2007 court order blamed Summit for design flaws…” (Dallas Morning News) Copy the code and paste it to your blog or website:
