High Wind Causes Glass to Rain Down

Firefighters closed off a San Francisco street for about half an hour Monday afternoon after strong winds blew out a window of the SF Mart  building and sent glass raining down onto the pavement below, a fire  department battalion chief said.

Ninth Street was closed at about 3 p.m. between Mission and Market  streets while a handful of firefighters cleaned up the glass with  janitor-style brooms and shovels, battalion chief Charles Krane said.

Krane said wind blowing through the corridor created negative  pressure, which blew out a Ninth-street-facing window about 10 stories up on  the northwest corner of the building.

He said the area gets some of the strongest winds in the city.

"And the higher you get, the faster the wind is," he added.

Wind gusts reached more than 40 mph this afternoon in San  Francisco, a National Weather Service forecaster said.

San Francisco police helped keep motorists and pedestrians off of  Ninth Street while the glass was cleaned up.

The street was reopened at about 3:30 p.m.

Bay City News

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