Patricia Bobb-Semple panicked, grabbed her personal documents and ran out of her Camp Street home yesterday after she heard a loud bang then saw a cloud of smoky dust when a section of the old Plaza Cinema building collapsed yesterday.
“I thought it was a fire when I see all the dust coming in my house through the window,” Bobb-Semple said in a shaky voice.
The woman said she was watching television with her relatives when they heard a loud noise and then saw a cloud of dust, initially mistaken for smoke, gushing through their windows. Bobb-Semple said she rushed out of her Camp Street home, located behind a Chinese restaurant and next to the rear section of the building which collapsed, and it wasn’t until she noticed the pile of rusted zinc and old wood next door and in her yard that she realized “Plaza Cinema had fallen down”.
The incident occurred around 5.30 pm and pieces of rotted beams and zinc fell onto Bobb-Semple’s roof and blocked the passageway leading into the woman’s yard. No one was injured.
When Stabroek News arrived at the scene shortly before 6 pm several persons, including the building’s former owner, were present. Several men could be seen in Bobb-Semple’s yard clearing away the rubble.
“I am afraid,” the woman said. “I hope that rest of that building doesn’t fall down tonight…they should’ve torn the building down a long time ago.” Many dilapidated buildings in the city are at risk of falling.
Plaza is one of the once-popular cinemas that fell on hard times in the last two decades. The Globe cinema is in an identical position while the old Metropole was destroyed by fire. The Strand is now a church while the Astor is in limited operation.
