Updated
A buckling floor outside a supermarket in the inner-Brisbane suburb of West End has prompted the evacuation of a shopping centre.
Movement under a tiled floor has dislodged tiles in ridges along the floor outside the Coles supermarket.
About 60 people were moved outside to a street-level carpark while police and fire crews inspected the damage.
There is an underground carpark directly beneath the supermarket and some cars were moved as a precaution, but others were trapped underground when the carpark was cordoned off by police.
It is not clear at this stage what has caused the structural issue.
Optometrist Daniel Chebib works nearby and said he had never seen anything like it.
"I saw that all the tiles had just been buckled up from the bottle shop right across the whole pavement of Coles so there's about three or four different zig-zag rows of tiles," he said.
"As we were walking back up the ramp towards Coles we did feel a bit of ground movement and at that point we did just evacuate and leave everything and move right out.
"When I was first told it didn't sound that scary but when I walked up and saw the tiles I thought yeah definitely something's going on here and when I felt that ground move, [I] definitely got out then."
Mr Chebib said when he felt the building move it was "a little bit of a sway" like being at sea.
"I've been there since 2000, so 18 years, and never [seen] anything like that ever before.
"I had spoken to the centre management and they said they would keep us informed with what's going on. Nothing is being said at this stage, they have got engineers in there assessing they safety of the venue."
Topics: emergency-incidents, building-and-construction, brisbane-4000, qld
First posted