Snow Brings Down Roofs in Boston

After weeks of snowfall, a rash of new collapses took place around Boston on Wednesday

Take six feet of snow in 20 days that largely never melted, add some rain and wet snow, and bang - you have a rash of new roof collapses around Boston Wednesday.

They included a partial collapse of the mostly abandoned Bayside Expo Center in Dorchester at 7:35 a.m. and a major collapse at 8:50 a.m. at the Boston Dedham Commerce Park on Sprague Street at the Readville-Dedham line, which damaged a warehouse and bakery building and toppled power lines into the street.

"You have to worry about everybody's safety," said said Marie Berqueira, who was evacuated from another building minutes after the roof collapse. "This has been such an awful winter."

"The exterior wall collapsed. The roof collapsed internally into the building, which snapped a number of high-tension poles and also ruptured a gas main," said Boston Fire Department Commissioner Joseph Finn.

No one was injured in either collapse, Finn said.

"The snow load is certainly a contributing factor to this collapse and also to the Bayside," Finn said, estimating that the Sprague Street roof still had a solid three feet of snow on it.

Later Wednesday, the Peabody Fire Department reported another collapse on Central Street. Again, no one was in the building, and no one got hurt, the department said.

Across the state since Feb. 9, the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency has compiled reports of more than 180 roof collapses.

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