No injuries reported in commercial building collapse near downtown Anchorage

No one was injured in the Saturday morning collapse of a commercial building housing a thrift store near downtown Anchorage.

The collapse occurred around 7:30 a.m., said Assistant Fire Chief Alex Boyd with the Anchorage Fire Department. The single-story building, on the northeast corner of Sixth Avenue and Ingra Street, is the site of the FashionPact thrift store, which is adjacent to an RV rental business.

“The collapse involved much of the roof and has created instability to outer walls,” Boyd said.

No one was in the building and the businesses were closed when the collapse happened, Boyd said. He said no one has been reported missing or injured.

Street closures in the area disrupted traffic for much of the day while crews worked at the scene. All roads in the area had reopened by late afternoon, police said.

Boyd said that some of the road closures were in place “in order to protect the public from possible secondary wall collapse.”

“The cause of the collapse is not yet known and we will be deferring questions related to the cause to the Engineers within development services / Building Safety,” Boyd said.

It wasn’t clear whether any pedestrians had been in the area when the roof collapsed, but “due to the traffic in the area several people saw the collapse after it had occurred and called,” Boyd said.

FashionPact’s owner, Brittani Clancey, said Saturday that she was “incredibly grateful” the store had been closed at the time of the collapse, and that none of her staff or customers had been inside when the roof crumbled.

“I have an amazing team of people that I love and care for,” she said. “I don’t know what I would do if somebody had got hurt.”

By late afternoon, a municipal inspector was still working to determine the cause of the collapse, Clancey said. The south wall had been demolished as a safety precaution, and the remainder of the building had been fenced off.

“We don’t know if we’re ever going to be allowed to walk back into this building,” she said. “They haven’t decided that yet.”

The thrift store opened in 2021 using a model where donors and buyers could pick a charity to receive a portion of proceeds from sales. It has partnered with more than 70 nonprofits and raised thousands of dollars for its causes since opening.

Ten Anchorage Fire Department units responded to the call about the collapse, according to Boyd. He said that the fire department, Anchorage police and city building safety and street maintenance personnel are coordinating on their response.

Saturday’s building collapse occurred about two weeks after the roof of the Turnagain CrossFit gym in South Anchorage collapsed during a fitness competition, killing one woman and trapping two others. Officials described thick ice buildup on the roof as one potential contributing factor in that incident.

In the weeks since then, the fire department had received one additional call involving a structural collapse in Anchorage, Boyd said. A carport in an apartment complex off West 32nd Avenue in Spenard collapsed last week, and no injuries were reported in that incident, he said.

Both the carport and gym collapses “occurred in flat-roofed structures built in the ‘70s, ‘80s or before, which appear to have an overload due to snow drifting or ice accumulation,” Boyd said.

The building that housed FashionPact was built in 1983, according to online property tax information.

The store on Friday had announced the grand opening of a second location, in South Anchorage, in just few weeks. All the new inventory for the new store was stored in the main location on Ingra Street, Clancey said.

“So it’s kind of devastating,” she said. “It’s going to make the grand opening pretty hard here in two weeks.”

Clancey said the store would be accepting clothing donations at their new South Anchorage location beginning Monday.

“That’s one way to support us,” she said.