Brown School roof collapse

[ron_newman]

The Brown School's roof collapsed last night. See link for story and photos. Fortunately the building was unoccupied at that hour. (hat tip to prunesnprisms for bringing this to my attention)

Edited to add: More detailed report at Wicked Local Somerville and Boston Globe report

Wasn't there a whole week of school closure in February, specifically to allow clearing snow from roofs? And the city was using drones to survey these roofs? I don't understand how this happened.

Comments

[mamabunny72.livejournal.com]

My child goes to the Brown. I just got an email that says, in part:

"Best practices generally allow up to 18 inches of snow on roofs. Our teams were instructed to remove any excess snow to achieve safe depths well below that acceptable level, in most cases to depths of 6 inches or less. All schools, including the Brown School, were evaluated for roof snow prior to, during and after completion of snow removal."

"We are still in the midst of a full evaluation of this incident, but our initial review of the cause of the collapse points to the likely combination of several possible contributing factors, none of which would have caused the collapse on their own including, among others: (1) melting of the less than 1 foot of snow on that section of the roof, (2) wood rafters that were found today to be weakened by pre-existing partial rotting that would not have been evident without ripping open the walls as there were no visible leaks, (3) rain that added additional water to the roof overnight. But again, we are still in the midst of a full evaluation and further updates will be provided."

[countlibras.livejournal.com]

I just heard about this from mom. eek!