Moment pier suddenly crumbles and dumps dozens of students into lake | US News

Dozens of university students fell into a lake close to their campus as a pier collapsed beneath their feet.

About 60 to 80 University of Wisconsin-Madison students plunged into Lake Mendota when the Memorial Union Terrace pier gave way on the afternoon of Labor Day, university police told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

A video shows the pier, full of students, caving in the middle and its outer edge following suit as the pieces dropped into the water. The students fell into the water helplessly and screamed. Some students on the pier closer to land backed up and were spared.

‘I just heard this single cracking noise,’ student Griffin Beronio, who was near the pier, told The Badger Herald. ‘The middle parts of it kind of sunk way faster than the sides.’

Many students swam to shore as other scrambled to find their belongings in the water.

‘I turned to this one girl, and we were like, “Oh my God. Did that really just happen?”’ a freshman Gabrielle Willbrandt, who was standing on the pier, told WMTV. 

Fire department members got the scene around 2.40pm and transported one person to a nearby hospital. Five people were treated at the scene and at least 25 people suffered minor injuries.

The exact cause of the pier collapse was not immediately known.

‘Me and my friend who I was swimming with heard a big noise, and the whole dock was collapsing,” student Nicole Mitchell told WISC.

‘There were dozens and dozens of students on it, just tanning or jumping into the lake or talking with their friends and suddenly the whole thing gave way.’

School officials stated that among the 60 to 80 people who fell were ‘other members of the public’, ABC News reported.

The pier crumbled just a day before authorities planned to take it down for the season.

There were no lifeguards near the pier, according to the Wisconsin Union.

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