Storm Damage Forces Castle Rock King Soopers To Close
CASTLE ROCK, Colo. (CBS4) - A King Soopers grocery store in Castle Rock is expected to stay closed until next week after heavy hail damaged the roof and caused tiles to fall from the ceiling into the interior of the store.
Many display cases and food displays were damaged by the falling tiles, and water still covered the floors on Thursday at midday.
The King Soopers is located at Founders Parkway and Interstate 25. When the tiles first started falling the store manager decided to send all the customers and employees to the basement to protect them from both what was happening inside the store and from the severe weather outside.
"It was starting to get really dangerous. All of the signs were even starting to come off of the walls. You could constantly hear stuff crashing, stuff breaking in the distance," said King Sooper supervisor Brandy Leggett.
"At that point is when we started hearing the tornado warning. At that point I called a co-worker and was like, 'You need to get on the intercom and tell everybody we need to evacuate as quickly as possible and get everybody to the basement.'"
"I think that's the best news, is that our store did a great job putting everybody in our basement and making sure that they were safe, and miraculously nobody was hurt," said King Soopers spokeswoman Kelli McGannon. "As you look around at the damage in the store, they did a great job insuring that."
It's not clear at this point how much damage the storm did to the store. Crews were out on the roof in the morning assessing the situation.
Store officials also said they aren't sure when they will be able to reopen. They believe it will be sometime next week.
They did say that anyone waiting to pick up a prescription at the pharmacy can still do so -- they just need to drive up to the drive-in pharmacy window.
The hail fell heavily for a long period late Thursday across Castle Rock and also caused damage to other businesses and homes.
Castle Rock resident John Wyatt filed an insurance claim for damage after his trees outside his home were damaged. He also told CBS4 he thinks his roof may have been damaged. He took the following photo of the hail that he collected:
