A man had a lucky escape this morning after Storm Katie made scaffolding in a shopping precinct collapse around him.
Thought to be in his early 20s, the man was walking past a coffee shop in Woodley when the incident happened between 7.10am and 7.20am this morning.
The scaffolding was torn apart and fell into the Crockhamwell Road precinct, destroying a tree, damaging shop fronts and buckling supports in the process.
Had the incident occurred on a normal Monday the precinct would have already been bustling and there could have been fatalities.
Police and fire crews cordoned off the area as they assessed how to make the area safe and are now planning a major operation to remove the scaffolding, which now sits like a dangerous game of pick-up-sticks or Ker-plunk.
Sharon Wright works in Brighton’s Newsagent, which is just next to the area that had been cordoned off.
She was in the shop when the scaffolding collapsed and heard the noise caused when it fell down. Ms Wright tended to the shocked man afterwards.
She told The Wokingham Paper: “The young lad came in shaken up just after it happened. He had a lucky escape – he was walking right under it.”
But the scaffolding was a ticking time bomb and could have come down earlier. A fellow staff member delivered papers to Bosco Lounge at 7am and noticed that debris had already fallen.
“Our gentleman saw tiles on the floor then,” she said, adding that it could also have collapsed on her.
“I walked under it an hour earlier, we opened at 7am,” she said, relieved at her own narrow escape.
The collapsed scaffolding had drawn large crowds watching the emergency services at work and police have erected a cordon to ensure the area is safe.
However, not all the crowds were watching the scaffolding – there was a large queue of poorly animals waiting for the vet to open.
Police and fire crews will remain on the scene today.
Stores and cafes including Waitrose, Nationwide, Thomas Cook, Clarks and Costa will be closed.
CORRECTION: We mistakenly said that Bosco Lounge was closed in our original report. This is not the case – it is open. Apologies.
