On Friday night, the balcony where the DJ was playing at Colonel Reef in Batroun reportedly collapsed resulting in the injury of several people.
The balcony on which 9 people were dancing by the DJ fell to the ground at 11:37 PM from a height of three meters after its wooden floor cracked and shattered.
A source that spoke to The961, on the condition of anonymity, said that everyone that was on the balcony that collapsed got severely hurt and some are still in the hospital.
3 of the 9 injured people got in contact with The961 to report what happened to them.
According to their separate testimonies, the injuries ranged from broken ribs and vertebrae to fractured back, coccyx, and shoulders.
Those fractures were not revealed to them by the Batroun hospital where the ambulance took 4 of “the most critical” followed by the less critical ones in cars, and the owner of the venue who reportedly stayed pending in the hospital until their release.
Strangely enough, they were told the X-ray scans “show nothing.” However, the scans in a Beirut hospital the next day revealed otherwise.
“The results were clear,” one of the injured people told us, noting:
” – one of us has a fractured coccyx ( is bedridden for the next 6 weeks)
– one of us has fractured ribs
– one of us has 3 fractured vertebrae (is bedridden for 3 weeks and must wear a corset for the next 2 months)
– one of us has a fractured shoulder and rib
– I personally was the luckiest, have a strain on my ankle, can’t walk, and have multiple bruises and scratches on my whole body.”
One of the injured people who contacted The961 said about the incident, “No warnings were given to us, and we were not made aware that the platform we were dancing on was not stable. The trauma of falling several meters with friends at a party cannot be processed…”
“I was also one of the people who fell from the wood extension where the DJ was set on and where the owner told us himself that it was safe to dance on,” one of the injured told us. “We were enjoying our night dancing around the DJ when suddenly the wooden planks under us cracked and broke.”
“We ended up, (all nine of us who were on the dance floor) on the sand after a fall of around 3 meters,” she added.
“I can’t tell you how horrifying [it is] to open your eyes and see that your closest friends are laying on the floor with broken bones, sobbing because the pain was too much to handle,” another person recounted.
As soon as informed of the incident, The961 contacted the Lebanese Red Cross in the area to check on the status and number of the injured but they refused to give a comment.
We reached out to the manager at Colonel Reef to inquire further. He told us that he “has no knowledge of such an incident ever happening.” He said that he is “going to ask any employee” who might have been there Friday night to ask about what happened and will get back to us.
Colonel Reef has yet to issue an official statement regarding this incident. Meanwhile, business is going as usual in Batroun’s pet-friendly beach that reportedly hosted another party the following night.
