Vikings Recount The Roof Collapse

Monday marked the one year anniversary of the roof collapsing at the Metrodome.  One year after the shocking near-disaster took place, a number of Vikings players recounted their experiences and, courtesy of Viking Update, here they are their stories:

Ryan Longwell:  “The night before, we sat in a meeting and Coach (Leslie) Frazier said there are some leaks in the roof and there was a chance the game could be delayed, but we were told not to worry because the roof was structurally sound.  Those were the last parting words before we went to bed. When I got up and turned on the TV, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It’s not like it happened at midnight. It happened at 5 in the morning. People start showing up for the game about 7 a.m. and working down on the field. Our first bus gets there at 8. We weren’t that far off from potentially being right out where the roof collapsed. Then you started thinking about worst-case scenarios. That’s when it started getting scary.  At the end of the day, nobody died and nobody got hurt, so that’s a blessing.  You can’t help but wonder what could have happened, but I think everybody who was on that team was just thankful that it happened during the night and not when there were people down on that field doing their jobs that could have been hurt or even killed.”

Lorenzo Booker:  “We were told that the game was going to be pushed back because there was a bunch snow on the roof.  It hadn’t collapsed yet, but there was enough snow on the roof that they figured there was the possibility of hazard. They said they game would probably be pushed back to Sunday night or Monday, but it was still supposed to played at the Metrodome. It was a crazy few hours that next morning. We were told the roof had collapsed and that the Giants were stranded in Kansas City, so the game couldn’t be played that day. Everything got in motion over the next six or seven hours and that was when they came up with the idea of playing it in Detroit.”

Chris Kluwe:  “I woke up in the hotel and checked my phone and heard about it on Twitter.  I had considered that it could happen because it is an inflatable roof, but I always figured they would have precautions to prevent that from happening.”

Phil Loadholt:  “I woke up and had a text message from Jimmy Kennedy, he was always kind of the breaking-news guy on the team, telling me to turn on the TV.  I was in shock when I saw it. My first thought was that it could have really hurt somebody and, if it had happened (during a game), all we could have done was hope we were on the other side of the field.”

Erin Henderson:  “My mind was blown.  It was kind of like, ‘Now what?’ I guess we needed more stuff to deal with, as if we didn’t have enough already over the previous three months. You need to have a routine that you do week-in, week-out. We had seen a lot of distractions, but this one was off the page. We’re creatures of habit, so when that happened, we were all pretty lost as to what to do.”

Kenny Onatolu:  “I just thought it was crazy.  When I first saw it, I thought it was a trick like you see in the movies. Once I figured out this is for real, I was imagining what would have happened had we been in there when it happened. It would have been chaos. I just sat on my bed in the hotel watching it over and over, just shaking my head.”

Charlie Johnson (who was with the Colts):  “I didn’t find out about it until the next day after practice.  I knew the stadium was old, but I thought the technology or architecture would be better because it’s in Minnesota and you expect a lot of snow here. You would have thought it would have been a little stronger. When I saw the video on SportsCenter, I couldn’t believe it.”

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