The two men who were beneath a garage roof when it collapsed Friday – killing one and seriously injuring another – were probably checking out the garage because it was already unstable and partially caved in, according to the injured man’s wife.

The collapse in Indian Stream Township in Somerset County killed Addison Yeaw, 58, of North Scituate, R.I. Glen Coulson, 52, of West Forks, remains hospitalized with a broken back.

Brookfield Renewable Energy, which owns the Harris Station dam at Indian Pond, also owns an adjoining campground and a six-house complex on Bun Russell Road, where the roof collapsed under the weight of 4 feet of snow.

Brookfield spokeswoman Julie Smith-Galvin said Tuesday the garage that collapsed was connected by a breezeway to an unoccupied home in the complex.

Brookfield “didn’t maintain the buildings” at the Bun Russell Road housing complex, according to Effie Coulson, Glen’s wife. The complex housed Brookfield employees but is now mostly vacant and in disrepair, she said.

“There weren’t people living in them,” she said of the buildings. “The garage had caved in, and my husband was probably just trying to fix it.”

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Smith-Galvin said in an email Tuesday that the six structures “are all in the process of being inspected before we determine next steps.”

She said the campground is used “primarily during the spring/summer recreational season and it is common for us to perform maintenance just before the first whitewater release scheduled for mid-April.”

Effie Coulson, speaking by phone Tuesday from Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, said her husband was “in pretty bad shape” and probably will be in a body cast for the next three months.

“It’s pretty serious. Hopefully he’ll be OK,” she said.

Glen Coulson is a maintenance worker for Brookfield Renewable Energy Group of Canada. The dam is at the headwaters of the Kennebec River, in northern Somerset County, southwest of Moosehead Lake.

Yeaw’s widow is a seasonal employee of the campground, and the couple rented a house across the street from where the collapse happened, witnesses said.

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Effie Coulson said Yeaw and her husband were in a garage at one of the vacant Bun Russell Road houses just after noon Friday examining damage caused by an earlier partial collapse when the roof gave way. Emergency responders found Yeaw trapped under debris. Coulson was also pinned in the collapse.

Smith-Galvin said Monday in a statement that there was about 4 feet of snow on the roof when it collapsed and that the company was “attempting to understand what happened and why.”

Coulson was taken by ambulance to Harris Station dam after the accident Friday. From there, he was flown by LifeFlight helicopter to Mayo Regional Hospital in Dover-Foxcroft. He later was transferred to EMMC in Bangor.

Doug Harlow can be contacted at 612-2367 or at:

dharlow@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @Doug_Harlow

 


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