First Avenue Roof Collapse Injures 3

Three people were injured when the ceiling of Minneapolis’ First Avenue partially collapsed during a concert Aug. 12. 

First Avenue concert when an approximately 30-by-30-foot section of ceiling gave way during the show, authorities said.

Three people were taken to a nearby hospital where they were treated for non life-threating injuries.

“I don’t know if anybody’s going to ever be able to tell us exactly why last night this portion of the plaster ceiling fell,” venue GM Nathan Kranz told Pollstar. “I can tell you it had nothing to do with water damage or deferred maintenance or any of those type of things. I’ve seen some reports out there, strange things like somebody wrote that possibly a water main broke.

“What we know is that a piece of the plaster ceiling … came separated from the beams that attached it to the roof. It’s held up by a system of wires and things like that. For whatever reason last night a portion of that fell and came down and on the way it knocked the fire sprinkler pipes, which then caused water to start flowing down, right after the ceiling collapse.”

An Aug. 14 Ginstrings concert was canceled but an Aug. 15 Miguel date remained on the books at press time.

“Our expectation is that certainly 7th St. Entry we’re hoping will be open by Saturday (Aug. 15) because there was no damage in there,” Kranz said. “It’s just that because it knocked out our sprinkler, we got to get our fire suppression system back in working order before we’ll open any of our rooms and we’re hoping that will happen either today or tomorrow (Aug. 14).”