Eight people were injured at a 99 cent store in The Bronx when the shop’s packed shelves collapsed, burying them under piles of merchandise, officials said.
The victims, including several children, were shopping at Discount Outlet on Morris Avenue at around 4 p.m. Monday when the shelving units began to fall, causing a domino effect, fire officials said.
“All the shelves just started falling over,” said Norma Villafane, 59, who was shopping when the chaos started.
“I was walking toward the back and all I heard was this thunderous loud noise,” she added. “I turned and shelves fell onto one gentleman.”
Seven of the victims were seriously hurt while one other victim suffered only minor injuries. All were treated at Lincoln Hospital and are expected to survive, officials said.
Bystanders rushed over to begin digging out those trapped under the shelves, which spilled hundreds of pounds of shampoo bottles, paper towel rolls and Hello Kitty lunch boxes throughout the store.
“They have too much merchandise on the shelves,” Villafane said. “I helped one man get out, he was caught and I said, ‘come on we’re both going to get out of here.’”
Lucy Tirado, 50, was walking through the store when one of the shelves fell on her husband, breaking his leg.
“It just collapsed in everybody who was walking through the aisles, it was horrible,” she said. “I saw a woman’s hand sticking out asking for help and heard children crying.”
Firefighters arrived and began removing merchandise from the store by hand, bringing it out to the street.
“A number of the shelves including the stock collapsed creating a cascading effect,” said deputy chief Anthony Montera. “We had three or four aisles of shelving that came down on the customers in the store.”
“We had to remove a lot of the items by hand to the street in order to get underneath,” he continued. “There’s some shelving down there, we also had to remove that very gingery to make sure nobody was trapped under the debris.”