Schoolgirl, 9, had every bone in face broken when Storm Doris ripped solar panel off gym’s roof and smashed it into her head
The nine-year-old faces years of gruelling surgery to try to rebuild her shattered face and may never be able to breathe again properly
A SCHOOLGIRL broke every bone in her face when Storm Doris ripped a solar panel off the gym's roof and smashed it into her head.
The nine-year-old faces years of gruelling surgery to try to rebuild her shattered face and may never be able to breathe again properly.
She was crushed by a piece of roof after the high wind ripped a solar panel from the ceiling of Southwood School in Conniburrow, Milton Keynes.
The huge piece of roof smashed down into the gym, where the girl was attending an after-school club with 40 classmates.
It broke every bone in her face after hitting her "square on".
Another parent with children at the school said: "It could have been so much worse. Just minutes before the ceiling collapse there were 120 children in that hall for end-of-the-school-day assembly.
The child, who has not yet been named, was described by other parents as a "pretty little thing" and suffered what were described as "horrendous life-threatening injuries".
An air ambulance was requested to fly her to hospital but the winds were so strong, the helicopter was grounded and the girl was taken by land ambulance to Milton Keynes General Hospital.
The girl, who is Somalian, was today transferred to the specialist head injuries unit at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, where surgeons carried out emergency operations to help her breathe and take in fluids and food.
Friends of the family said that the girl's face had been permanently affected by the impact and attempts were being made to plan operations to rebuild her facial features and repair her broken bones.
"She literally faces years of surgery because of the appalling injuries," said a friend.
"Her family speak very little English and have been provided with an interpreter so that they can be interviewed and can question what happened.
"The Health and Safety Executive has been called in to investigate what happened at the school. The poor girl is very very lucky not to have been killed - can you imagine something the size of a snooker table smashing into your face?
"She is being very brave but will spend a long time in hospital and endless gruelling plastic surgery to try to restore her facial features," added the friend.
Details of the solar panels and what happened were revealed in a leaked briefing report to Milton Keynes Council.
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The Health and Safety Executive confirmed it was investigating the tragic incident in which debris measuring 8ft by 5ft crashed into the gym.
A spokesman for the HSE said they would be looking to see if any building work had been carried out in the past which might have been a contributing factor.
Some locals claimed the roof collapse was caused by wind getting underneath the solar panel, making it unstable before a section of the roof was torn off.
A hole where the missing panel had been could be seen after the collapse.
One knowledgeable resident said: "The solar panels were fitted five or six years ago.
"The problem is that the solar panel concept is still quite new and nobody really knows the effect that a freak wind such as Storm Doris can have."
It comes after an inquest found Tahnie Martin was killed by a “decayed and neglected” heating tank cover that had fallen from the top of a shopping centre during Storm Doris.
The 29-year-old suffered multiple head injuries after being struck by the piece of wood, which measured 2 metres by 1.5 metres in size.
At the opening of her inquest at Black Country Coroners Court on Thursday, the hearing was told the debris had come from the 'upper most part' of the Mander shopping centre.
The 29-year-old, from Brunswick Terrace, Stafford, was pronounced dead at the scene.
The cover also struck Ms Martin's friend, who received leg injuries, just outside Starbucks on Dudley Street, the inquest heard.
Speaking at the inquest, Detective Sergeant John Garbett said CCTV footage had captured the moment Miss Martin, a marketing manager, was struck.
He said: “Our investigations discovered the debris had come from the upper most part of the Mander shopping centre.
“It was part of a cover for an old heating tank. The debris which struck Miss Martin showed signs of decay and neglect.”
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