Winston County courthouse wall caves in

WINSTON COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI) – One side of the Winston County Courthouse caved in Tuesday morning leaving behind piles of brick and concrete, as well as a few headaches for county leaders.

It was a call the Winston County Board of Supervisors weren’t expecting. A section of the back wall of the courthouse was about to come down. And there wasn’t much time to act.

“We did declare it an emergency. We’ve hired Pryor and Morrow to do some preliminary engineering. We’ve contacted our insurance folks, we met with them this morning, and they are doing some investigating too, to see what may have caused it. We don’t know what the cause is other than time, and I think the building is 60-65 years old,” said Luke Parkes.

As a precaution, the road next to the Courthouse has been shut down, and a barricade has been set up near the damage.

“This disaster is still in the process of happening. We just had the first occurrence. If you look at it and examine it you can tell that there is going to be more bricks falling and we want to make sure that everyone is first of all safe, and second of all that they can continue as normal with their lives as possible,” said Buddy King.

While some employees and residents may be shaken by the sight, the building itself is still stable.

“Operations with inside the courthouse are not necessarily going to be impacted by this. We’ve been assured by engineering staff that the building is structurally sound; however, we’re going to have to do some management with our access and egress, how we get in and out of the building, during these times because a couple of the entrances are going to be closed for safety,” said King.

But the tumbling walls are having a domino effect on some county business.

Luke Parkes said the collapse will cause further delays to another project.

“We accepted bids to build a new building yesterday we contacted the contractors that we awarded bids to yesterday, and the building fell down this morning, so we are on hold on everything right now,” said Parkes.

Kings said they will be keeping a close eye on the building as they continue to investigate the cause of the cave in.