Engineers found serious deficiencies in the construction quality of the wall that collapsed in an Augusta Civic Center locker room last month just before a high school boys basketball state championship game.

The non-load-bearing partition wall fell when a Monmouth Academy Mustangs player leaned against it to stretch, causing a minor injury to his hip.

The wall was “somehow compromised such that it could not resist” the weight applied to it, according to a new report from Harriman, an engineering firm hired by Augusta to investigate the collapse.

But the exact reason the wall was compromised remains unclear, Robert Overton, Augusta’s director of code enforcement, said.

Engineers only inspected the wall after it collapsed, he said. No prior structural complaints about the wall are on file.

“We don’t know what that other factor was,” Overton said. “So our next key step here is, sometime over the next couple weeks, we’re going to be doing a more in-depth inspection of these types of walls in the building to try to determine if there is something that we need to address.”

That inspection has not yet been scheduled, he said.

The wall consisted of concrete blocks with no internal metal reinforcement and no mechanical connection into the floor or ceiling. Construction plans were not closely followed, the engineering report found — the walls were not built to connect to the ceiling as the design indicated.

It’s a not-uncommon design in the 1973 Civic Center building: some restrooms, a storage room and the locker rooms have similar partition walls, Overton said.

Augusta Civic Center wall collapse Report by Maine Trust For Local News

Overton said earlier this month he noticed “minor cracking” in similar walls during his personal walk-through of the building after the collapse Feb. 28.

He said he won’t know more about the full number of potentially faulty walls, their condition or the repair cost until the full engineering examination is complete.

Any areas suspected to have these walls, he said, will be supervised while in use, per the recommendations of the report, to ensure no weight is applied against the walls.

While the walls would not pass modern construction and code enforcement muster, they were common practice for non-load-bearing partitions in the early 1970s, the report stated. Stewart and Williams Construction Co. used designs from Bunker & Savage Architects and erected the $3 million building in about a year.

The building has significantly deteriorated since it opened. A leaky roof, aging electrical systems and HVAC systems prompted conversation at the City Council level in 2024 about fully refurbishing the building. The price tag to do so: at least $33 million.