A massive chunk of a Fontana strip mall's roof caved in Friday, crushing cars and trapping people — but mercifully injuring no one.
Dramatic surveillance footage clearly captured the moment of the collapse, as several people escaped in the nick of time from the shopping center at the corner of Mango Avenue and Foothill Boulevard.
Joseph Rodriguez was standing under the roof seconds before the collapse, loading tables from a nearby party store into the back of his truck.
"I was going to put jumpers on there, but I decided to go to the liquor store for something," Joseph Rodriguez said.
He walked into Sami’s Liquor and Market in a decision that may have saved his life.
"Right when I walked into the liquor store, I heard big crash," Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez immediately ran outside and toward the party store to see if his wife and their 1-year-old son, Giovanni, were OK. They were shaken up but fine, he said.
"If my baby wasn't inside and running out like he was, he would have been hurt, if not worse,” Rodriguez said.
The roof landed right in front of a health clinic and trapped several people inside. They were quickly rescued by San Bernardino County firefighters.
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The debris was too large to remove from the cars, so the owners had to leave them behind.
It was not immediately clear what caused the roof to suddenly come down, but for Rodriguez, the fact that no one was injured is a small miracle, considering how many people were in the parking lot in the middle of the day.
“There's just a bunch of concrete and big pieces of wood I could have been buried under if I wouldn't have went to the liquor store within five seconds,” he said.
