Express & Star

Roof blown off Walsall building as high winds continue

A roof was blown off a building in Walsall as high winds continued to batter the Midlands.

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Fire crews were called out to a building on Queen Street in Walsall, which houses a number of businesses including Walsall Motor Spares and Lancer.

Police had sealed off the street when fire crews were called out at around 7.30am this morning.

Bricks and bits of wood had fallen off the building, and the metal roof had been ripped back to show the wood while a sign was blown off by the wind.

Watch manager Chris Hands, from Walsall Fire Station, said: "From our viewpoint overhead it looks like the roof was it was a flat roof but we're not sure if they had some leaks or something.

"The wind has been able to get into the roof and blow it up over on itself.

"We were there for about 40 minutes but there is not much we can do. The wind has blown off the roof and the wood underneath but there is still the under roof which is there.

"Police sealed off the road as there was bits of masonry which had fell off , but it requires specialist workers to fix it so the road will be shut until the wind dies down and it can be fixed."

Mahmood Skan works at nearby Autofix, and said the sign at his store had also been blown off by the wind.

He said: "I got to work at about 8am this morning and I could see the sign was just hanging off.

"It fell off and it was in bits and pieces all over the car park.

"It was hard for me to see what actually went on further down the road because it was closed off, but you could see that the roof had been blown off.

"It looked like it has folded back onto itself and you could see all the bits of debris on the car park.

"When I got into work the fire and police were already here and had closed the road off so it must have happened overnight."

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