A Regina pawn shop with $200,00 worth of merchandise is buried under its own roof.
At about 7:00 a.m. today, the roof at Absolute Cash, in Regina’s North Central neighbourhood, gave way under the weight of heavy snow and ice.
The roof collapsed from just inside the entrance of the store all the way to the back.
When it came down, it ruptured a natural gas line — making a bad situation even worse. Regina fire department spokesman Gerrard Kay says it was lucky it happened before the store opened:
“Yeah, it could have been a lot worse. The time of day, at 7:00 this morning, was ideal if this was going to happen because no one was in the store. If it would have happened at, say, noon — when the store was busy — it would have been much, much worse.”
This is the third roof collapse in recent days in Regina. All of them have involved flat-roofed businesses. No one has been injured in any of them.
Fire crews say the record snow this winter combined with the freeze/thaw cycle this spring is to blame for the rash or roof cave-ins.