Apollo Theatre roof in London's West End 'collapses'

[Adam]

Apollo Theatre roof in London's West End 'collapses'

More than 60 people have been injured after the roof of the Apollo in the West End collapsed mid-way through a packed evening performance, as police confirmed "multiple casualties".

A rescue operation was launched at 8.15pm following the collapse, as eyewitnesses reported seeing members of the audience trapped, bleeding and with broken bones.

The Grade II listed building was left covered in a cloud of dust and debris during the performance of The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-time, with the cast of the show interrupting their act to point at the ceiling.

Eyewitnesses said they initially thought it was part of the show, before "seeing the look on the ushers' faces" and fleeing the sell-out performance.

Others claimed they saw people with broken bones, wearing oxygen masks. Stetchers were seen entering the building from ambulances outside.

The London Ambulance Service said there were 65 casualties, while some of the injured were transported to hospital on a London bus.

Khalil Anjarwalla, who was watching the play with his wife and in-laws, said people were screaming and rushing for the exit as the roof collapsed onto the stalls.

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For those who don't know, "stalls" in English theatre means orchestra-level seating. A "Grade II-listed" building is sort of like a building on the historical landmark register.


This sounds like a pretty ugly incident. I have to wonder what would have precipitated a collapse like this.

[Gingersnap]

This is awful! My prayers go out to the victims and the families.

[Adam]

More than 80 injured.

[Gingersnap]

More than 80 injured.

Just terrible! I wonder what kind of inspections it had? In the U.S., facilities like that come under at least two codes: one the local/regional building code but also under the Life Safety Code. I enforced the LSC at one time and although we weren't obligated to write up building code violations, we had a huge chunk of related regulations that made us look at a lot of the same issues structurally.

It was a sadly frequent thing that we would find stuff the other people missed and then they would have to reinspect based on our write-ups. Does the U.K. or EU have a code similar to the Life Safety Code? I would think they did.

[Adam]

Just terrible! I wonder what kind of inspections it had? In the U.S., facilities like that come under at least two codes: one the local/regional building code but also under the Life Safety Code. I enforced the LSC at one time and although we weren't obligated to write up building code violations, we had a huge chunk of related regulations that made us look at a lot of the same issues structurally.

It was a sadly frequent thing that we would find stuff the other people missed and then they would have to reinspect based on our write-ups. Does the U.K. or EU have a code similar to the Life Safety Code? I would think they did.

The Health and Safety people in the UK are absolutely fanatical about this kind of stuff. For God's sake, it's a legal requirement to have a freaking reflective safety vest in your car at all times in the UK. They really take "safety" to a ludicrous extreme over there, and they inspect the hell out of everything. I cannot imagine that those folks would have somehow overlooked some sort of major structural deficiency that would lead to this sort of catastrophic failure.

[Lanie]

That's really awful.