The contractors working on a west end commercial building that collapsed, say they may never know what happened.
As first reported earlier this week, the building near Shiloh Road and Avenue C came tumbling to the ground Monday afternoon.
The warning signs were there for everybody to get out safely.
They've cleaned up the site, and they'll be ready to go as soon as the materials are delivered.
"About 4 o'clock-ish, they heard some noises, some concerning noises," said Preston Lees, Beartooth Holding & Construction vice-president. "By 4:30, they'd started to visibly see some stuff that caused some concern. And then the lead framer, Jamie, called it all clear and they got out of the building. It wasn't too much longer after that and the building collapsed."
Lees's company is the general contractor.
He says this is the first time he has had a building collapse during construction.
The city of Billings building division does not have a cause.
While there is no conclusive cause, Lees has looked at the City Brew surveillance footage in slow motion.
"It looks like kind of was weak in one spot slowly started to tip," Lees said. "But they were all tied together, all the bracing kept them together so they really visibly looks like they came down almost at the same time."
"Watching the footage, I'm confident that we've we did everything right and this was a this was a freak deal," Lees said.
Travis Nelson is the owner operator of Premier Builders, the company handling the framing.
His crew has worked on the same design on four other buildings on the property.
"Engineer said things looked good," said Nelson. "OSHA said we did things right. You can't ask for a lot more than that. But you can ask to not have a collapse. You know, that's a It's a tough deal."
Some of what has been constructed can still be used, but most of the material will go to the landfill since it can be dangerous to dig through to find usable pieces.
And they say the timing of the collapse was fortunate, since it happened when the truss installation was complete, and everyone was on the ground and able to move out of the way.
"What we're really grateful for is that the framing crews did the right thing," Lees said. "They got out of the building and everybody's safe as a result of that decision."
"We'll kind of keep searching for those answers a little bit," Nelson said. "But at the end of the day, I'm really proud of my guys. They did everything right. They did a good job. And they made the right decisions and everybody was safe."
It's possible construction could restart as early as next week.
