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Superlatives should be used sparingly. Let's be honest, they're thrown around far too liberally nowadays by us tacky grub street journalists. Wonderful, marvelous, spectacular, remarkable, phenomenal, prodigious, breathtaking, extraordinary, unbelievable, amazing, stunning, astounding, astonishing - these words that should be reserved for events that leave you genuinely gob-smacked.
• That wave of Laird's at Teahupo'o in August 2000 - unsuprassed.
• Einstein's general theory of relativity - ingenious.
• The pyramids of Geeza - remarkable.
• Eating your lunch - unremarkable.
• 300kg of cement and bricks smashing through your roof at 100km an hour while you're eating your lunch ... I'm certain there's a superlative in there somewhere.
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Larmont's new skylights
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What sounded like a bomb going off at 98 West Street today at lunch time was in fact an entire wall that had fallen 20 storeys from an adjacent building and crashed through their roof.
We will let the photos do the talking, but there were at least half a dozen large pieces of concrete that weighed in the 10-40kg range. The rest of the shower was made up of single bricks, giant roof beams that got collected on the way down, and bits of corrugated iron that were stripped off the shop's roofing in the freak accident.
Owner and Durban surfing legend Mike Larmont guesses it's at least R100k worth of damage to his roof and building. Remarkably, no one was hurt. A few customers had just left the shop, Mike was working in the back office and shop manager Rob was behind the counter. Two of the biggest slabs landed in the middle of the shop floor and flattened some clothing racks, a third enormous piece drilled its way straight through the upstairs deck and landed in the area between the customer counter and the shop window, missing Rob by inches. The Gringos area, which Mike also owns, suffered the remainder of the serious damage.
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Pieces of wood resting neatly upon a flattened clothing rack.
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I'm no medical expert, and fortunately I've never had a brick land on my head from 20 storeys above, but I'm certain that even the small pieces of shrapnel that ended up on the floor would have had dire consequences for anyone standing in the wrong place.
City building inspectors have closed off the section of Kenton Building. Part two of that story to follow as it unfolds. Mike was as stoic as ever, sweeping up the mess, SMS'ing his insurance broker and getting ready to reopen the shop in less than a fortnight - with a new roof of course.
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