A witness to the accident described a domino effect once a single rafter (now replaced) in the barn cracked. Five people were injured as the rafters fell onto each other, and eventually, into a pit.
Construction had resumed the next day, and information was scarce at the site. Abraham Smucker of the Amish Community confirmed that five men had sustained injuries of varying degrees of severity. He identified one man, Stevie Zook, as the most severely injured. He believed Zook had been transported to Vanderbilt Medical Center for treatment, but could not identify others due to the large number of workers involved in the project from other communities.
A call to Vanderbilt Medical Center confirmed that a patient named Stevie David Zook was in their care. No other details could be released.
Cliff Joiner, a driver for the Amish community, and not Amish himself, described some of Zook’s injuries. “They took out his spleen, he had three broken ribs, a broken wrist, a crushed shoulder, a broken pelvis and a punctured lung.”
A member of the Amish Community in Lancaster, who declined to be identified for this story confirmed Zook’s injuries. He was unsure of the identities of other men injured, but believed two were also from Lancaster, and thought one man’s surname may have been Mose, and the other was named Ebersol. He added another worker, that he did not know sustained a laceration on the forehead.
Smucker attributed a number of factors for the barn’s collapse. “There was some bad lumber in it. That and a combination of other things.”
For the rest of this story, read this week's Cadiz Record.
