The ceiling at Broad Street furniture store A Peaceful Home collapsed Friday afternoon, nearly striking an employee, according to the Asbury Park Press.
From the story:
Hundreds of pounds of plaster ceiling came crashing down inside a downtown
furniture store this afternoon, nearly injuring an employee who had been in a different section of the first-floor storefront when the debris fell.No one else was inside A Peaceful Home when about half of its 2,200-square-foot ceiling collapsed about 2:20 p.m. with little warning, said Stanley Sickles, the borough’s fire marshal and construction official.
The collapse’s cause remained under investigation, though the store clerk, Dorothy Coleman of Manasquan, told authorities that she had noticed this morning an enlarged crack in the ceiling. Coleman also found bits of plaster on the floor, Sickles said.
An office on the floor above the store had been under construction. There was also a water leak in the ceiling a few weeks ago, Sickles said.
Coleman “was very lucky” not to have been hit by the plaster, some of which came down in chunks as thick as 3 inches, Sickles said.
