The owner of a Knoxville tire service company says they will rebuild, after the roof of their building collapsed due to heavy snow last week.

No one was injured when the roof fell in at Raceway Tire and Exhaust at 209 South Lincoln Street last Wednesday. The building is now closed off; no customers’ vehicles were damaged, although one remains trapped inside and will be removed later this week.

Travis Thompson tells KNIA/KRLS he wasn’t in the building at the time of the incident, but says the creaking roof tipped off his staff to the problem, and they got out well ahead of the cave-in.

“But our whole staff was in the building as they started hearing some of the cracking and popping noises, and they weren’t quite sure what was going on,” Thompson says. “But the Good Lord was watching out for them, because he gave them a little bit of warning before the rest of the building caved in as far as it did. The employees were probably outside roughly about fifteen minutes before it really came down.”

Thompson is thankful no one was hurt; he says one of his customers has offered the use of a site south of Knoxville as a temporary location for Raceway Tire and Exhaust while the complex is being rebuilt.

The staff will begin moving out equipment once the remnants of the building are safe to enter, and transfer what they can to the new site. Thompson says there’s no timeline as yet for how long reconstruction will take.