Ceiling partially collapses at Florida middle school

A roof at a Fort Lauderdale, Florida, middle school partially collapsed Friday morning, forcing the evacuation of more than 200 students and faculty members.

Fire rescue crews told WSVN about a dozen people complained of minor ailments such as headaches and nausea, but Telemundo is reporting no injuries.

The roof collapsed at Rickards Middle School in Broward County.

According to the school district, the roof of the school’s media center was under construction and no students or staff were inside the media center. There was a construction crew on the campus at the time of the collapse.

“Before 10 o’ clock this morning, the principal of Rickards Middle was in his office when he heard a noise which was followed by a subsequent noise,” said Keyla Concepcion of Broward County Public Schools. “When he went out to investigate and see where the noise was coming from, that’s where he realized that the media center, which is currently under construction, the roof collapsed. Fortunately, no student or faculty members were inside the media center. Everyone has been evacuated to Northeast High School next door.”

Fort Lauderdale Fire Chief Stephen Krivjanik said they sent dogs inside to ensure no one was trapped in the rubble.

“Luckily, through our search and our primaries and the great attentiveness of the school principal and their staff, they were able to evacuate everybody, get all the construction people out, so everyone was accounted for, but just to be sure, we always do routinely another secondary search; we also brought a dog in to search the entire school to make sure no one was in there and also a drone to check to make sure there was no one on the roof that maybe got hurt during the collapse,” Krivjanik said.

“Once that’s all been complete, which it has been complete, we can absolutely confirm that there were no injuries inside the school, no one trapped,” he said. “Everyone got evacuated correctly and is accounted for correctly.”

The district said it is investigating the cause of the collapse.