FC Twente Stadium Roof Collapses: 1 Dead, 14 Injured
The roof of a soccer stadium in the Netherlands dramatically collapsed Thursday trapping victims inside, and causing at least one death and 14 injuries.
In Holland it is currently close-season; so no match was going on in the Grolsch Veste stadium. However, the building was undergoing construction and the victims were said to be workers.
One construction worker described the event to a Dutch public broadcaster: "We were at the third level and we were frightened. There was noise, everyone was running everywhere. We were working below the floor. There was panic, everyone was running away. Then we looked if there were injured people".
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The construction was to expand the stadium’s capacity from 24,000 to 30,000 with a new tier of seats.
The team that plays there, FC Twente, won the national league in 2010, and was runner this season. The FC Twente players were not involved in the incident and were training in Zeeland, a southern region, at the time of the collapse.
Jan van Halst, the team’s general affairs manager, urged fans not to come to the destroyed stadium during a televised news conference, as crowds would obstruct the work of emergency response teams.
Grolsch Veste has been FC Twente’s stadium since 1998 and is named after the local beer brewery and sponsor, Grolsch.
FC Twente is scheduled to compete in Europe’s main soccer tournament this coming season, the Champions League.
