Roof collapses at Raleigh gas station near NC State University
Two Han-Dee Hugo's employees escaped seconds before a Raleigh gas station roof collapsed near NC State, sending merchandise into the street.
Emergency crews responded Friday morning to an apparent building collapse at a Han-Dee Hugo's gas station near Hillsborough Street and Gorman Street, where two employees were inside when the ceiling started cracking around 7:15 a.m. The workers got out seconds before the roof came down.
ABC11 reported that merchandise was sent flying down the street as the structure failed. The collapse happened near North Carolina State University, putting the station in one of Raleigh’s busiest corridors and turning a routine morning stop into a near miss that could have been far worse if customers or pedestrians had been inside.
Raleigh fire officials said the incident was reported as an apparent building collapse. No other injuries were included in the initial details, but the scene raised immediate concerns about how a failure at a neighborhood gas station can spill into the public right of way and affect traffic around campus.
The Raleigh collapse fits into a troubling pattern of gas-station structural failures in North Carolina. At a gas station construction site in Brier Creek, at 4209 Corners Parkway near TW Alexander Drive and Glenwood Avenue, a trench collapse killed one worker after three others were rescued. One worker got out on his own before the body of the fourth was recovered around 4:15 p.m. after the collapse around 11 a.m.
A separate gas-station roof failure also drew firefighters in Winston-Salem in January 2022, when a partial roof collapse at a Valero station forced a rescue response. Together with the Raleigh incident, those cases show how quickly danger can develop at service stations, where older buildings, active customers, fuel pumps and nearby roads leave little margin for error when a structure starts to fail.
The Han-Dee Hugo's collapse near NC State also highlights the vulnerability of aging commercial properties in dense urban districts. In a location that serves students, commuters and neighborhood traffic, a few cracks in the ceiling turned into a roof collapse within seconds, sending merchandise into the street and putting workers within feet of serious harm.
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