Brick Building Collapsing In Westmoreland County

WESTMORELAND COUNTY (KDKA) -- A collapsing building sent bricks falling onto a sidewalk and road in Scottsdale on Friday.

Part of Walnut Avenue in Scottdale looks like a brickyard.

Megan Barish has a front-porch view of a few tons of bricks that fell off the old Mennonite Publishing building.

And if not for some fortunate timing, Barish and her kids would have been hit by them.

"We were on our way home from the store," Barish said. "My neighbor was in front of me and stopped. I didn't see it and it came down."

(Photo Credit: KDKA)

Things are cleaned up for the most part, and all the bricks are piled up on one side of the street.

When the bricks fell, some exploded and flew across the street.

And if you look around, you could see quite a few more bricks that are cracking and separating from the rest of the building.

This kind of partial structure collapse is not unusual in Western Pennsylvania.

Like landslides, the freeze-thaw cycle loosens bricks and down the bricks went.

The building and part of Walnut Avenue are currently off-limits until the rest of the loose bricks are removed or succumb to gravity.

"They're going to have it cleaned up by the 7th, and they're going to have an engineer come down and look at the cracks and get the rest of the bricks down," Barish said.

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