A group of high school boys playing soccer at the Indoor Athletic Practice Facility at Eastern Michigan University made it out safely after the facility’s structure fell early Sunday.
At about 8:30 a.m. Nov. 29, fabric from the air-supported structure began to split from east to west, causing the structure to deflate, said Eastern Michigan University spokesman Geoff Larcom.
EMU students Megan Trapp, 21, and Rachel Washburn, 20, were working at the facility Sunday morning when a father reported a large popping noise in the structure, Trapp said. Both women are a part of the EMU women’s soccer team.
They found a large hole at the base of the dome and called a supervisor.
Then, they heard another large popping noise.
“It split at the seam and went all the way across,” Washburn said.
The high school boys and their parents began evacuating at the second pop, and Trapp jumped through the new opening to run back to the front to direct them out, she said.
Washburn and the referees, who were about 50 yards away from the door, started directing people to leave. The dome had begun to collapse.
She said she sprinted out the front after yelling for people to leave and assuring no one was still in the structure.
“That’s probably the fastest I’ve ever run,” she said.
The structure’s fall was both gradual and fast, Washburn said. It fell in a wave from the back, she said.
About three minutes after the split, the dome was on the ground.
After, she was exhausted and her “adrenaline was flying.”
“It could have been a lot worse,” Trapp said.
She noted the dome may not be hard, but the attached indoor lights could have caused injury had anyone been hit.
Luckily, they weren’t, in part, thanks to Trapp and Washburn.
“You all did a good job today,” one Eastern Michigan University police officer told Washburn as she walked to pick up some food just before noon. They had been on site since 6 a.m.
Larcom said the university is investigating what caused the fabric tear.
