The roof of a merchant in Saint-Ambroise collapses

The motorized Giant staff of Saint-Ambroise in Saguenay were horrified to see part of the roof of a building collapse under snow and ice on Tuesday morning.

Authorities said there were two workers in the collapsed area.

It can be said that they escaped as the building collapsed on motorized vehicles and it prevented the staff from reaching it.

“It could have been more dangerous than that. On a day like this, there are staff on duty. Fortunately, no one was injured,” said Julian Reward, director of the Saint-Ambroise Fire Department.

In the showroom of the entertainment car dealership Giant Motorized, the back of the building collapsed.

“This is part of the roof that represents 25% of the building,” he said. Reward said.

The entire building was evacuated. The company, which has owned Roulottes AS Lévesque for a few months, called in an engineer who was scheduled to visit the site on Tuesday afternoon to inspect the entire system. So trade is closed until further notice.

According to a preliminary assessment by the fire department, the cause of the incident was the accumulation of ice on the roof.

“What we noticed is that this is a building that has been renovated many times. In one area there is a wooden frame, in other places there is a steel frame. It’s actually a wooden frame that collapsed,” said Julian Reward.

According to the owner of Caouette Construction, which carries out snow removal from residential and commercial roofs, special attention should be paid to certain types of buildings.

“When they are old buildings or well-insulated buildings, it creates heat loss, which melts the ice into ice and this ice becomes very heavy. So it creates more loads,” Daniel Coyote explained.

“Many times you can’t see because there is snow above. So, you have to climb on the roof and do a test,” he added.

Mr. Caouette recalled.

“When about two feet of snow, 60 cm of snow starts to accumulate, it starts to be a good idea to remove the snow from your roof,” he said.