Babble

babble
verb, intransitive or transitive. To talk rapidly and continuously in a foolish, excited, or incomprehensible way. To utter something rapidly and incoherently. To reveal something secret or confidential by talking impulsively or carelessly. Also an adjective or noun.

After the crash echoed through the building, he rose from his desk and went in search of its cause. It had sounded as if it came from the warehouse at the rear of the shop. As he approached that area, he joined a stream of others from the front offices, all babbling at once.

He did not join the chatter. He was thinking about what could have caused a noise loud enough to startle everyone in the front of the building. Nothing but silence had followed, and if anything, that was more ominous than the crash. He hoped he would find only a spilled pile of merchandise or a crumpled wall panel that had been hit by a forklift: anything but an unconscious or injured employee.

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.