A quiet afternoon shattered by a surprise collapse sent people scrambling for help. Anita McFarland owns "The Watering Hole" restaurant, and also the building.
"We were in the process of doing some demo today on the center wall next to the kitchen inside and when we pulled that out it made a tremendous crash."

That crash was so loud, people didn't know what happened.
"Someone called 9-1-1 and said that a car had hit the building because of the extreme noise," said McFarland.

Lincoln firefighters responded, closing O street and quickly treated three workers who had mainly minor injuries.
Battalion Chief Bruce Sellon explained what happened.
They were trying to remove some columns and it appears they had inadequate support for this balcony area and when the column was removed it ended up collapsing."

Building rescue experts with Lincoln Fire and Rescue went right to work.
"We have a couple truck companies that are trained in technical rescue operations so if we have parties trapped they would do shoring operations to make sure that we wouldn't have further collapse as we go in and effect a rescue," said Battalion Chief Sellon.

Sidestepping a major disaster, McFarland is confident the project can continue safely.
"We have a structural engineer that's been working with us through the project so I'm confident everything will be fine."