(NECN: Alysha Palumbo, Easton, Mass.) - Bowed under the weight of the snow, the roof on this Triton building in Easton lost its battle with Mother Nature Wednesday morning.
In a matter of seconds, the massive three and a half acre building was reduced to a pile of rubble…as employees who had just been inside minutes earlier watched it crumble down.
Sunco employee James Finch said, "We looked out into the warehouse as we saw the rafters start coming in and within 30 seconds of the first cracking sound the roof's actually starting to come in."
Triton employee Michael Maguire said, "You could just hear kind of the rumble of metal and the alarms went off and the ceiling tiles started to fall and I just yelled to everybody get out of the building."
The snow also collapsed this airport hangar in Norwood, as two mechanics scrambled to safety.
Mechanic Lance Drew said, "I just ran out and the beams were coming down behind me and I hid underneath a desk and just waited for everything to stop."
It was truly a day of near misses.
Local
Here in Weymouth amazingly no one was at this busy gas station on Route 18 as the snow snapped this canopy onto the pumps below.
And in Brockton, firefighters responding to flooding in this closed warehouse had to evacuate as they realized a hundred foot section of the roof had collapsed.
Brockton Fire Chief George Phillips said, "We've had an awful lot of snow, a couple of feet of snow on a lot of roofs and then you get a day like today with extra rain, it just added that much extra weight to these roofs."
