Downtown buildings collapse

A pair of downtown buildings collapsed Christmas Eve, bringing down trees, power lines and a street light.

Nobody was injured in the collapse at 7:42 p.m. Thursday of 114 and 116 S. Osage Ave, said Assistant Fire Chief Ronnie Finnell.  

The buildings, which are most likely remembered as the old Coffee Pot Cafe and Howell's Seed and Dairy Supply, were likely being used for storage.

“Both buildings just pancaked in on one another,” Finnell said.

The collapse took out “some pretty high-voltage wires going to downtown,” and caused an outage, Finnell said. He didn’t think the outage had anything to do with the loss of power to some of eastern Sedalia from about 10 p.m. to 1:30 a.m.

Authorities are unsure what caused the buildings to collapse and have yet to identify the owner of the property. Finnell said it is possible the building owner lives out of state.

“I think they are trying to get an engineer on Monday,” to help determine the cause of the collapse, he said.

Osage Avenue between Main and Second streets will remain closed until the debris is cleaned up and the area secured.