Shopping Mall Overhang Falls, Trapping Worker

A 200-foot section of second-story overhang collapsed at a Camarillo shopping center Monday night, trapping a workman inside and sending huge arcs of water spraying skyward from a ruptured sprinkler system.

Ventura County firefighters using axes hacked through an interior wall to free the man, who escaped injury when he ducked back into his office just before the 10-foot-wide overhang collapsed onto the balcony outside and blocked his door.

“I heard a lot of noise, it sounded like people running,” said Joe Edmonds, 62, a workman installing a door at Sylvia’s Costumes in the second floor of the Ponderosa Center, a complex of stores and offices at 315 Arneill Road.

Edmonds said he stepped onto the balcony to check the noise about 8 p.m. “All of a sudden there was a lot of creaking and plaster started coming down,” he said. “If I’d have stayed out there and been curious another minute, I might be under all that stuff.”

It took firefighters with axes about five minutes to chop through the drywall of a neighboring shop to free Edmonds, said Chief Al Wilsey.

“We just put a hole in there and he crawled right out,” Wilsey said.

While the firefighters worked to free Edmonds, Southern California Gas Co. employees rushed to shut off the gas lines to the shopping center that includes a Vons Market and Thrifty Drug Store.

County rescue workers then brought in a German shepherd trained to sniff out other victims and gas leaks. But officials said no other people were trapped in the collapse, and the gas lines were secure.

Meanwhile, dozens of people gathered at the rescue scene, including patrons who had rushed out of downstairs restaurants at the sound of the collapse.

“It was a horrible sound,” said Patti Ruckert, assistant manager of Rene’s Career Fashion. “I thought it was an earthquake.”

Fire inspectors made sure everyone was out of the building, then began trying to determine why the lightweight wooden overhang covered with Spanish tiles had collapsed.

Ventura County Fire Marshal Jim Smith said no cause for the collapse was determined by 10 p.m. Monday.

But he said this type of construction “is well known in the fire service. We watch for lightweight construction like this.”

Although the Vons supermarket attached to Ponderosa Center will remain open, Smith ordered the collapsed section of the building--which includes a pizza parlor and the Republican Central Committee’s office--closed through today while building and safety inspectors examine the structure.

Reed is a Times staff writer and and Saillant is a Times correspondent. Times correspondent Scott Harrison contributed to this article.