WESTLOCK – One person has died, and dozens injured after a structure collapse at Westlock Meditation Centre (Tu Vien Tay Thien) near Busby.
Dozens of emergency personnel vehicles from surrounding areas had responded after Westlock RCMP got a call about the incident around 5:27 p.m. on Wednesday.
“There were many, many people injured,” said Cpl. Troy Savinkoff Public Information Officer for Alberta RCMP Media Group.
“We have quite a few people that received a varied amount of injuries,” he added. “Many with just minor bruises, more than 50 had minor injuries, but there were several that received serious injuries. I don’t have the exact numbers yet. People were taken to hospitals with EMS and some in personal vehicles. Several people have serious injuries.”
Witnesses have said there were about 200 people in the tent structure at the time.
“I heard a large number similar to that,” said Savinkoff. “We have investigators on site. We will get a number once we are further into this investigation.”
Mike Ellis, Alberta Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Services, tweeted that the province is aware of an event in Westlock. He said there is limited information at this time.
Savinkoff said the cause of the structure collapse is under investigation.
“We are still looking into that. There was a pretty severe weather event that came in with a lot of wind. It seems pretty clear that that had a large contributing factor to the collapse. Any more than that will be determined throughout the investigation, what could have caused any potential failures to the tent itself.”
Savinkoff said that the RCMP are still working on notifying the family of the one deceased person.