Hannah Jones/Winonan

Homecoming, for many students, was a wild weekend of fun, but for students at a house near the corner of Mark Street and Main Street, it was possibly a little too much fun.

The incident began at 2 p.m. on Saturday as a party outside the apartment complex, with several students standing on a wooden stairwell going down the side of the building. Lily Pittelkow, a freshman from Waterford, Wis., was there when the party turned from fun to dangerous.

“It started raining,” she said. “Everyone tried to get into the upper apartment, and people were underneath the deck trying to get into the lower apartment.”

The inclement weather drove the students indoors, scrambling up and down the stairs to seek shelter. Somewhere in the rush of bodies and the thud of footsteps, Pittelkow heard a creaking noise. That was all the warning the students had before the entire staircase collapsed.

Sophomore Sarah Nyberg was also there at the scene.

“There were like 12 to 15 people on the porch,” she said. “It cracked twice, and it fell.”

First responders arrived and had to assist at the scene, lowering down students trapped on the second floor as well as freeing a few students who were trapped under the wreckage of the porch.

Several students were transported to Winona Health, including a friend of Pittelkow’s, who injured his back. Other students sustained cracked ribs, neck injuries and stitches. Most were lucky enough to make it out with minor cuts and bruises.

Nyberg herself walked way with only a scrape on her ankle.

Saturday afternoon, the wreckage of the porch was still visible. Yellow caution tape had been installed around the ruin of the staircase, and the door to the upper apartment hung suspended, leading only into thin air.

Freshman Hanna Barritt, another friend of Pittelkow’s, was unsettled by some of the dangerous activity that permeated her first homecoming at Winona State. However, she could speak from experience when it came to Homecoming in her hometown of Sommerset, Wis.

“That’s the worst part of Homecoming,” she said. “People always get hurt.”

Nonetheless, students were still partying outside of the apartment later that day, playing beanbag toss, chatting and darting around the rubble to get keys and IDs from inside the apartments.

For Pittelkow, the accident was a potent first impression for future years of Homecoming festivities.

“It was the memory of a lifetime, I’d say,” she said.

Contact Hannah at [email protected]