12 Are Injured When Deck of House Collapses
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GAULEY BRIDGE, W.Va. — A deck collapsed at a home during a Fourth of July party, injuring 12 people, officials said.
As many as 25 people were on the deck when it fell late Friday as the town 25 miles southeast of Charleston was putting on a fireworks display, officials said.
“I guess they were all out there on the deck watching,” Shane Wheeler of Jan-Care Ambulance Service in Beckley said Saturday.
Victims fell 10 to 20 feet, depending on where they were on the deck, which stood over a hillside, Wheeler said.
The collapse was the second in West Virginia in two months. In May, 17 people celebrating the end of the school year were injured when a second-story deck at a house near Marshall University in Huntington collapsed.
Last weekend, a third-story porch collapsed in Chicago, killing 13 people and injuring at least 57.
The people injured at Gauley Bridge suffered cuts and fractures, Wheeler said. Three were hospitalized in Charleston. No information on their conditions was available.
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