Theater ceiling collapses during 'Captain America' screening in Washington State

The only two people watching "Captain America: Brave New World" in a movie theater in Wenatchee, Washington, on Tuesday night began hearing strange creaking and moaning. In a film where an absurd amount of furniture is smashed, dramatic final breaths abound and fighters grunt through mortal combat, the sounds fit right in.

But at some point, perhaps during a quieter scene like when [redacted for spoilers], the moviegoers looked up and watched as part of the ceiling toward the front of the theater began to shift, according to Brian Brett, the chief of the Wenatchee Valley Fire Department, which responded to a collapse at Liberty Cinema a little after 8 p.m.

"They started to move away from what was falling from the ceiling," Brett said in a phone call Thursday. "A very large section of framed-in area underneath the roof came loose and dropped into about the first three rows of seats in the old historic theater."

One of the viewers was "struck by some debris" but was not injured, and the other person avoided the debris altogether, Brett said. The two viewers declined to be interviewed or identified.

Photographs from the scene showed plaster, drywall and pink insulation blanketing the front rows of the theater. Wires hung from the roof like streamers.

The cause of the collapse was not immediately clear. The building is old, and asbestos might have been exposed by the collapse, Brett said. Emergency responders wore full-face masks connected to air tanks to avoid breathing the air inside the theater, he added.

Liberty Cinema was closed indefinitely for inspections. It is managed by Sun Basin Theatres in Wenatchee, a city of about 35,000 people nestled between the foothills of the Cascade Range and the Columbia River, about 90 miles east of Seattle.

"This location is very near and dear to our hearts and it's been a pleasure serving up popcorn to you all from this location over the decades," Sun Basin Theatres said on Facebook. "That's why we're taking the time to properly sort this out."

Brett said he had not experienced something like this in the town's history. He was glad the two moviegoers were OK and worried about what would have happened had the theater been more crowded.