Dozens of Australian moviegoers were injured yesterday when the roof of a cinema crashed down on them during a wild storm, forcing them to scramble under seats to avoid falling debris.
Police said 36 people suffered minor injuries at the Metro Cinema in the regional center of Bathurst, 175km west of Sydney, when the building’s false ceiling fell down on them.
“All these patients received minor injuries, including cuts and abrasions, with the most serious injury occurring to one person being a shoulder injury,” Ambulance Service paramedic Craig Pusser told ABC.
Sixteen people were initially trapped in the collapse, but emergency officials quickly released them before conducting a secondary sweep to ensure no one had been overlooked.
Moviegoers said children had screamed after parts of the ceiling began raining down on audiences in several screens at the multiplex theater, while one patron narrowly escaped being hit by a large piece of an air-conditioning unit.
“We were watching [Chronicles of] Narnia and we heard water leaking ... at first we thought it could have been special effects,” one witness told Sky News. “And then it got louder and louder, and then the roof was coming down on us.”
Bathurst local Annastasia Burns, who had her three-month-old baby with her, said she was waiting for the movie Love and Other Drugs to begin when she realized something was wrong.
“Rain started coming through the corner of our cinema, but no one worried too much,” she told the Daily Telegraph. “Then one person went out to tell the cinema staff and when she came back the water started pouring in and the whole ceiling fell. We hit the decks under the seats straight away.”
“The entire ceiling fell and we were stuck under it,” she said.
Burns said she sheltered with her baby under the seats while a girlfriend who was 39-weeks pregnant who was also with her -managed to crawl to safety.
Aaron Lange, who was at a restaurant next door to the cinema at the time, said about 40 people were brought into the eatery to be checked after the accident.
“As far as injuries are concerned, I think they would be at the lower end,” he told ABC. “There were some children who seemed to be distressed, more than injured.”
The intense storm which hit Bathurst brought wind gusts of up to 90kph to the town and dumped 10mm of rain in 30 minutes, the weather bureau said.
Flooding has caused havoc across a massive area of northeastern Australia, but the latest incident was unrelated.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in