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Reba McEntire Is Rescued By Emergency Workers After A Staircase Collapsed

Reba McEntire appears at the Country Music Association Awards in 2019. The singer was rescued from a building in Oklahoma this week after a staircase collapsed.
Mark J. Terrill
/
AP
Reba McEntire appears at the Country Music Association Awards in 2019. The singer was rescued from a building in Oklahoma this week after a staircase collapsed.

Once again, country music star Reba McEntire is a survivor.

She was rescued from a historical building in Atoka, Okla., when a staircase collapsed.

The 66-year-old singer was removed from the building through a second-story window by a fire ladder, local TV station KXII reported.

"While my team and I were in Atoka, OK yesterday checking out an old historical building, a staircase collapsed," she said on Twitter. "Thankfully, no one was seriously injured."

McEntire said she and her team were safely evacuated, and she expressed gratitude to the city's fire and police departments for their quick response.

Travis Mullins, emergency management director for the city of Atoka, told KXII that the stairwell from the second to the third story in the building collapsed. The staircase crashed onto the stairs between the first and second floor — trapping people in the building.

"It opened our eyes to see exactly just how unsturdy they were and when they did collapse, we [saw] what little was holding them up," Mullins said in an interview with the local broadcaster.

McEntire and her team were touring the building in downtown Atoka on Tuesday for a "future project," KXII reported.

No other details have been released behind the future project or how the historical building would be used.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Jonathan Franklin
Jonathan Franklin is a digital reporter on the News desk covering general assignment and breaking national news.

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SOMOS CONNECTICUT es una iniciativa de Connecticut Public, la emisora local de NPR y PBS del estado, que busca elevar nuestras historias latinas y expandir programación que alza y informa nuestras comunidades latinas locales. Visita CTPublic.org/latino para más reportajes y recursos. Para noticias, suscríbase a nuestro boletín informativo en ctpublic.org/newsletters.

The independent journalism and non-commercial programming you rely on every day is in danger.

If you’re reading this, you believe in trusted journalism and in learning without paywalls. You value access to educational content kids love and enriching cultural programming.

Now all of that is at risk.

Federal funding for public media is under threat and if it goes, the impact to our communities will be devastating.

Together, we can defend it. It’s time to protect what matters.

Your voice has protected public media before. Now, it’s needed again. Learn how you can protect the news and programming you depend on.

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