UPDATE: Pottstown Row Home Ceiling Collapse Leaves Resident in Stretcher

A resident of a Warren Street row home in Pottstown was taken from the building in a stretcher this afternoon following a ceiling collapse, according to The Mercury.

The person was accompanied by a Pottstown police officer and two paramedics.  The person’s identify and injuries were not yet communicated to the public. 

According to a Pottstown Fire Department official, the building’s second floor bedroom ceiling collapsed.  The official also indicated that someone from Pottstown’s code department was walking on the scene.

Pottstown Fire Department Fire Marshall William Smale told Patch.com that the row home’s male resident was injured after a section of the plaster in the middle bedroom of the second floor fell onto a drop ceiling—which could not hold the weight of the plaster—and then the drop ceiling consequently fell on the resident.

According to Smale, this issue is not uncommon in some of the older houses: “It happens all the time in these old houses where you have the old plaster with all the warm weather we have, or there might be a roof leak that might damage, and the water gets in and causes water damage to the plaster, and as it dries out it just falls,” Smale told Patch.com.