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Water
tower crash
causes 10-foot waves
Sun Newspapers -
7/18
SOLON — A
35-foot-high water tower outside Pioneer Standard Electronics
Inc., 5440 Naiman Parkway, collapsed at July 11, sending bent
metal and 280,000 gallons of water crashing to the ground.
Two Pioneer
Standard workers, who had been performing routine maintenance on
the tower, were hurt. After the collapse, a 10-feet-high wave of
water ripped up the parking lot, moved parked vehicles up to 25
feet and slammed into a neighboring business.
"Somebody
could have been killed," Vince Garcowski, a witness, said
Friday.
Garcowski is
warehouse manager at Integrated Logistics Systems, located just
north of Pioneer Standard. He said a Pioneer Standard fence washed
up near the ILS docks.
"That wave
hit this building so hard," Garcowski said. "The top
rail of their fence was just twisted like a pretzel. You had
100-to-200-pound chunks of asphalt smashed up against our
building. They traveled about 75 yards across the parking lot.
Anyone in the water would have been hit by those."
The water carried
one of the injured workers, 31-year-old Jason Briggs, away from
the ILS docks and dropped him near railroad tracks behind the
buildings. Briggs sustained a broken leg and collarbone and was
taken to Hillcrest Hospital in Mayfield Heights.
Marsha Palmer,
director of corporate communications for Pioneer Standard, said
Briggs was still in the hospital as of Tuesday and was awaiting
surgery on his leg. She said he was in good spirits.
The other injured
worker, 43-year-old Doug Custer, was treated at Hillcrest for
minor cuts and abrasions and was released the day of the incident.
Palmer said the
two men were on the ground when the tower collapsed at about 3
p.m. She said the company was still investigating the cause of the
collapse.
"We leased
the facility, and the water tower was also leased," Palmer
said. She said she didn't know who owned the building and tower,
which was used for fire control.
Police and fire
officials attributed to collapse to a structural failure. Fire
Chief William Shaw said the tower was between 35 and 40 years old.
At ILS, the water
wave blasted through all six open warehouse doors and flooded the
warehouse.
"All the
guys were working on the dock," Garcowski said. "We
heard what sounded like a small muffled explosion. We glanced out
the door, and there was a 10-foot wave that just hit our
building."
Outside, the
water moved two box trucks 15 to 20 feet in the parking lot. When
the wave headed back toward Pioneer Standard, it took the
half-full ILS Dumpster with it. A red sports car was left crumpled
in the parking lot, its windshield smashed and its axle cracked.
"We had a
couple of trucks out in the parking lot," Garcowski said.
"And those guys were kind of lucky because they were sitting
in the truck when the wave hit. If they had been outside, they
would have smashed up against the building."
Afterward, water
was about a foot deep in the parking lot. Garcowski said the water
went down in about 20 minutes, thanks largely to huge drain in the
ILS docks.
Someone called
911 from a multi-tenant office building between Pioneer Standard
and ILS. Seven fire and rescue vehicles and seven police cruisers
responded.
Martin P. Katz,
president of Performance Forms Inc. in the multi-tenant building,
said he arrived just ahead of one of the fire vehicles.
"I thought
the place had been bombed," Katz said. "I had no idea
what was going on.
"It must not
have made much noise, because when I came in, I asked the fellow
who works with me what happened. He said he didn't hear a
thing."
"We went
outside and saw the commotion," Katz said. "It was quite
a scene. A lot of water, I tell you. They couldn't shut the water
off. It kept coming. Apparently a valve pumps water into the
structure."
Police ordered
workers to stay inside their buildings while they checked for
natural gas leaks. None were found.
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