After 82-year-old Rose Domenick’s faint voice faded away Friday morning, Lt. Carl Dropka and his rescue workers feared the worst: They would find Domenick, and perhaps other shoppers at a North Riverside supermarket, dead and buried.
But after nearly an hour of frenzied digging through mounds of tangled metal and debris from the store’s collapsed roof, relieved emergency workers found Domenick alive and again talking. They also found her alone.
“All we heard was a muffled voice,” said Dropka of the North Riverside Fire Department. “She was just trying to make some kind of voice, and we kept telling her, `We’re on our way. We’re on our way.’ Then the voice disappeared.”
Domenick was buried beneath hundreds of pounds of wood pallets, tar paper, piping and ceiling tiles that collapsed about 10:20 a.m. from the store roof onto the produce department of the Dominick’s Finer Foods at 7401 W. 25th St.
She was listed in serious condition Friday night in Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood with fractures to her face, arms and ribs, a spokeswoman said.
The accident sent 11 other Dominick’s shoppers to the hospital with only minor injuries. No store employees were believed to have been hurt.
Domenick could have been hurt much worse, officials said. “She was very lucky,” said Dropka.
Fire officials said six of the 12 victims who were treated were able to walk out of the store.
North Riverside Fire Chief Dominic Salvino said the section of the roof that collapsed encompassed 1,600 square feet. He said the accident may have been caused by overloading the roof with heavy materials, including 200 to 300 rolls of roofing paper, each weighing an estimated 100 pounds.
Contractors from Associates Roofing and Waterproofing of Wauconda had been working on the strip center’s roof for several weeks, said a Dominick’s spokeswoman. Store employees and regular customers said the roof had been leaking over the produce department for some time.
Salvino said an unknown number of wood pallets loaded with rolls of tar paper fell through the roof. Rubble inside the building was 4 feet deep in some areas, he said, and included the roof’s base of sheet metal, support joints, drop-ceiling tiles and sprinkler pipes.
For more than an hour Friday morning, rescue crews feared that others might be buried beneath the rubble. A chaplain for the Fire Department and workers from the Cook County medical examiner’s office arrived at the scene, but their services were not needed.
“This is one time we’re thankful our store wasn’t more crowded,” said Andrea Brands, a vice president of Dominick’s Supermarkets Inc., the chain’s Northlake-based parent firm. She said the strip center’s landlord, Simon DeBartolo Group Inc. of Indianapolis, had hired the roofing contractor.
A spokeswoman for Simon DeBartolo said the North Riverside building was constructed in 1977, but she referred further questions to the roofing contractor. A woman answering the phone at Associates Roofing said the company had no comment.
The time of the accident may have limited the number of injured, Salvino speculated.
“I think if it had been evening . . . it could really have been a disaster,” he said.
Regular shoppers who arrived minutes after the accident said the store usually is busy on a Friday morning.
Frank Chovak of Berwyn stood outside the store an hour after the accident, still clutching his grocery list. He said he arrived as employees and shoppers were streaming out of the store just minutes after the roof caved in.
The evacuation was orderly, he said, though some employees were visibly shaken by the event. Chovak said he called his wife to tell her that he was all right.
“She said I should go to church and pray,” he said.
Robert Mariano, Dominick’s Supermarkets president and chief executive officer, said the company is committed to finding the party responsible for the accident.
He said the company was cooperating with officials from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, who arrived at the store Friday afternoon to investigate. OSHA officials could not be reached for comment late Friday.
The store will not reopen, Mariano said, “until we are assured the building is safe.”
The store’s inventory also will have to be examined, he said, since refrigeration in the building was turned off after the accident.
Several store employees, scheduled to work Friday afternoon, arrived as scheduled, some saying they left home immediately after hearing the news to check on co-workers. Many cried as they hugged those who had been inside when the accident occurred.
Also flocking to the scene were area residents who feared their relatives were inside the store when the roof collapsed. Among them was Donna Siffermann of La Grange Park, who said her grandmother had gone to the store in a bus filled with seniors that morning.
“My heart stopped when I heard about this,” Siffermann said. “She wasn’t back at home. I got very worried because I knew this is where she was going today.”
