Help, ceiling fell down - what precautions to take to clean it up until it can be repaired

A good swath of plaster ceiling fell down in my son's room (see https://maplewood.worldwebs.com/forums/discussion/id/117242-Repair-plaster-patch-with-sheetrock-or-sheetrock-the-whole-ceiling). Is it sufficient to wear a dust mask to clean it up at least enough to salvage his homework and some clothes?

Yes!

Please tell us he wasn't hurt.

Move him out of the room for a couple of days while the guys you called get it repaired. It may be for the best that it came down. There's an underlying problem which will be more apparent now.

While it's a bit frightening I don't think it's catastrophic.

G L

Is there a roof immediately above the room?

I just posted on my other thread, but thanks, all, for your concern and help. My son is fine - he heard the ceiling start to pull away and got out of the room just before it fell.

There is an attic crawl/storage space and the guest bedroom above his bedroom, and there is no sign of water in either of those spaces. I will definitely have the estimators who come tomorrow take a look up there and see if they see anything.

For the record, this ceiling has been very slowly failing for a long time - years, in fact - but it's one of those things that I kept saying "oh, we should do something about that soon" and then forgetting to do anything.

When it started looking significantly worse a few weeks ago, I called a couple of painting companies and got one no-show and one no-estimate after coming to look at it, so I lost my momentum and let it slide another few weeks until I noticed last night that it was in imminent danger of falling, which prompted me to make more calls today. So, I admittedly neglected it for far too long.