Not a good headline: "'Largest Sloping Green Roof' Collapses."
A section of the roof at the 256,000 sq ft St. Charles, Ill., headquarters of pond construction company Aquascape crumpled to the ground on Sunday, the Chicago Tribune reported.
No one was injured in the collapse, which company officials said was likely the result of an ice dam forming and preventing melting snow from draining off the roof. The section, about 50 feet wide, ran the length of the building and extended over a parking lot.
The LEED silver-rated building housed a warehouse and offices.
"There's really nothing about the inherent design of a green roof that should make it more susceptible to this kind of collapse," Joseph Clair, director of energy and sustainability at the Illinois Institute of Technology, told the Tribune. "Green roofs have been installed in this country and other countries that have snow for hundreds of years."
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