Michael McDonald could hardly believe what he saw when he arrived at his Home Hardware store in Brussels, Ontario, on Sunday night.

“I got an alarm call around 5:30 p.m. All the alarms started going off. So, we came up to check it out and noticed that the front of the building was tipped forward,” McDonald recalled. “Upon going inside, there was quite a snowbank inside the building. It’s really unfortunate, but we’re just grateful it happened outside of business hours, so no one was inside.”

McDonald suspects the cause of the collapse was excessive snow accumulation. Over the past two weeks, Brussels—like many other Midwestern Ontario communities—has been buried under 50-60 centimetres of snow, adding to the similar snowfall levels recorded in January.

While the situation is undoubtedly challenging, the store owner and local authorities are assessing the damage and working on recovery efforts to ensure safety moving forward.