Posted: Sun Jul 22 2001
Rube Goldberg Museum Collapses

(Wankerton, KS) Several attendees were injured in an implausible sequence of events at a museum dedicated to the famous artist and engineer.

Fire officials said that although over 200 people were in the building when the collapse began, almost everyone was able to avoid injury by escaping because of the extreme slowness of the incident.

The collapse apparently began in the third-floor restroom when the fourth toilet began to overflow after the occupant was brushing away a fly and dropped his keys into the bowl.

The overflowing water ran across the floor to an old, fraying electrical cord which short-circuited, sending up a shower of sparks. One of these sparks hit a mouse that had been attracted by the flowing water, and sent it scrambling under the door where it frightened an elderly cleaning lady in the hall.

The cleaning lady, who had been putting off getting a pace maker for reasons unknown, suffered a mild heart attack and grabbed the nearest object for support. This turned out to be the fire alarm. Upon hearing the siren, the attendees began to evacuate the building. This was the main reason for the low number of injuries, but it was also the main reason for the collapse.

As the museum-goers walked down the stairs toward the exits, they all accidentally began to walk in step, which created sympathetic vibrations in the stairwells at the four corners of the building. This in turn caused standing waves in the water pipes, and eventually shook the building apart some ten minutes later.