Hinton, Iowa — A building collapsed this weekend in Hinton, partially blocking traffic on Highway 75 for a time.
No one was inside the 120-year-old brick and concrete building when its west wall collapsed at about 8:10 a-m Saturday. Owner Sara Smith says the building was used for storage of equipment, and her husband had noticed earlier that something didn’t seem right.
(As above) “I’m thinking it had something to do with the roof. My husband was down here yesterday looking at it. Contacted the insurance company yesterday. Something just didn’t seem right so he wanted to get the insurance company down here to get it looked at,” Smith says.
She says the trouble her husband noticed may’ve been the cause of the collapse.
(As above) “The beams have crisscrossed, they weren’t in alignment any more. We get a lot of truck traffic, so it vibrates the whole building every time they go by. I don’t know if that had something to do with it or not,” she says.
The Le Mars Fire Department checked the building with its drone to see if there were any additional concerns with the integrity of the building. Smith estimated the damage to the building’s contents at “hundreds of thousands of dollars.” She wasn’t certain as to the value of the building itself.
