Inside Edition spoke to construction safety expert Peter Amato to find out how the Clemson house party turned disastrous.
College partygoers jumping up and down at a fraternity party suddenly crashed through the floor and into the basement below, injuring 30 people.
Construction safety expert Peter Amato told Inside Edition that overloading an elevated floor is never a good idea, and that jumping up and down only increases the pressure and sends it undulating through the floor.
At a Saturday night party in a rented apartment complex rec room off campus, Clemson University students began jumping up and down to rapper Chief Keef's single "Faneto," a hip-hop party anthem known for unleashing a writhing mob of enthusiastic stomping at Keef's concerts.
But the celebrants at the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity party appeared to be too much for the wooden floor, which could be seen collapsing in several cellphone videos, sending screaming young people plunging in a free fall.
"Everybody was jumping, next thing you know, I'm jumping, I had my hands in the air and I can feel myself falling," Leroy Pearson told WSPA-TV. "Then I wake up, because I blacked out, and there [were] girls everywhere with blood all over their face."
Others reported the floor felt like a trampoline before it disappeared under their feet. None of the partiers suffered life-threatening injuries, authorities said. However, some broken bones were reported.
This isn't the first time a floor has given way under crowded conditions. It happened last year at the University of North Texas during a homecoming party at a third-floor apartment where a crowd was jumping and dancing and ended up breaking through the floor. There were no serious injuries, but residents in the complex were displaced. In 2001, a floor collapsed during a wedding reception in Israel, killing 23 guests and injuring 340 others.
The first rule of avoiding collapses such as these would be to "not overload the floor, of course," Amato said.
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