Snow collapses carport roof

By DAVID ERICKSON / Whitefish Pilot

Ten cars were crushed on Sunday when a snow-weighted carport roof collapsed at a Park Avenue apartment complex, trapping one man in the cab of his truck.

"It was just one loud crash," said Thomas Popp, who had been trying to get his truck started. "Then the cab was gone. The driver's side wouldn't open, so I had to kick out the passenger side and army-crawl out."

Popp was fortunate he wasn't standing next to his truck when the structure came down, as the four feet of wet snow on the roof made it heavy enough to smash windows and pop several tires.

"I've been restoring the truck," said Popp, who works as the apartment building caretaker. "It's lucky I ducked when it collapsed or I would have been crushed."

Popp said a neighbor warned him that the carport looked unstable, and he had run out to rescue his 1984 Toyota.

The structure, which was built with a corrugated metal roof and wooden beams, may have been holding 70,000 to 80,000 pounds of wet snow, according to Tony Mauro, a contractor with A1 Construction. His company has been hired by the building's owner, Whitefish attorney Bill Hileman, to build a new structure.

"There aren't any cross-beams. I noticed that right away," Mauro said.

Another resident of the building, Isaac Hall, said he heard the crash from his upstairs apartment at about 11:30 a.m. on Sunday.

"All of the sudden, there was a lot more light in my living room," he said.

Hall's car and several others were moved a good five feet from their original location by the falling roof. As of presstime Tuesday, none of the cars had been removed from under the wreckage.

"I was supposed to be at school today," Hall explained. "Instead, I have to wait to talk to my insurance agent."

Whitefish Pilot photographer and sportswriter David Erickson arrived home Sunday night after a long, unseasonably warm day of snowboarding at Whitefish Mountain Resort to find yellow police tape in front of his apartment building.

"A nasty nose-dive had left me sore, tired and in a not-so-great mood," he said. "However, when I saw my empty parking place in between all those crushed cars, I realized my good fortune. It turns out even a bad day of snowboarding is still a good day."