No more problems at Pincourt shopping mall

"As long as the firemen and the engineering department had not given us their OK to reopen, there was no question of doing it," said Michel Bernier, emergency services and fire safety director.

The mall closed down yesterday after a concerned shopper called 911 and alerted police there were cracks in one of the shopping mall's stores.

Though it was originally thought the cracks were only due to the uncharacteristically high amount of snowfall this winter causing pile-ups on the mall's roof, a more thorough inspection has determined that was only part of the case.

"Two of the stores at the mall recently moved into one location together," explained Bernier. "They worked on destroying some walls during the project," he said. The combined stress from that activity on the mall, along with the snow on the roof, is what caused the cracks. "It's not just the snow, though. There were seven to eight inches of thick ice on the roof."

Pincourt's last problems with too much ice build-up on rooftops was during the ice storm in 1998, according to Bernier.