This afternoon after I finished my workout at the SE Huntsville YMCA I was walking to the child care area to pick up my kids when I noticed everyone suddenly turn to look towards the pool area.  On the way from the gym to the child care area you pass through the lobby and can see into the indoor pool area.  There are three indoor pools: a full size lap pool closest to the lobby, then a small wading pool, and at the far end a kiddie pool.  I joined the rush and went to the window to look into the pool area and saw that about half of the large steel air ducts had fallen from the ceiling (probably about 20 feet).  I took a quick picture with my camera phone (I apologize for the quality).

The portion of the ducts that fell varied in size from about one foot in diameter down to about one and a half or two feet in diameter.  Amazingly no one was hurt.  From what I heard one young girl was hit by a falling duct, but she said it was more of a glancing blow.

Most of the ducts fell on the walkway around the pool, but at the back of the building the ducts partially fell into the kiddie pool.  Fortunately the duct didn’t fall around the lap pool since the swim team was practicing and there were lots of kids standing on the walkway.

The event highlights the little decisions that sometimes change your life.  Just a couple of days ago I was swimming in the kiddie pool with my two older kids (well, I was actually just following the unsteady one around).  I considered taking them swimming again today, but felt a little guilty about my poor attendance in the gym lately.  If I had taken them swimming we would have likely still been in the pool and my oldest child may have been in the deep section of the kiddie pool where the duct fell.  As they say, it makes you think.

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This entry was posted by Brian on Monday, March 26th, 2007 at 5:55 pm and is filed under Huntsville. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.