This unusually snowy, icy winter has led to several roof collapses across the province — and roofers taking more calls than usual.
The Journal de Montréal reports that some roofers have been taking up to 20 times more calls for appointments than they normally would — something at least one of them hasn't seen since the 1998 ice storm.
Tony Dule with Entrepreneur Général F.D., tells CJAD 800 he's been getting a high volume of calls recently from people whose roofs are on the verge of caving in.
"People are panicking...especially from the last storm that we had," Dule says. "Besides the snow, there's a lot of ice on the roof, and the drains are completely blocked."
This past weekend, there have been several four significant incidents involving roof collapses in the province. In St. Jerome on Saturday night, the roof of a two-story apartment building gave way under the weight of the snow and ice, destroying several apartments on the top floor and a butcher shop at ground level. No one was hurt, but several residents will have to find new places to live.
On Friday, in the Quebec City suburb of Lévis, the roof of a Metro Plus grocery store partially collapsed, injuring two people, while on Saturday, the Jacques-Côté Arena in the Sillery district had to be evacuated after some cracking noises were heard, and pieces of the roof of the building starting coming down from one of its beams. About 40 people inside were evacuated safely.
Jon Eakes, the host of CJAD 800's Home Improvement Show, tells CJAD 800's Elias Makos there are warning signs you should look for before calling a professional.
"The first thing you do before you ever go on the roof, is don't worry about the exact [number of inches of snow and ice] on the roof," he says. "You go to the inside of the house and you look at doors. You look at doorways in the middle of the house. Do they jam? Have they changed in the last few days? If the doors are having trouble, or you see cracks in the corners of the doors in the middle of the house, now you call a professional. Now you worry about the weight."
Eakes also says you shouldn't try to climb onto your roof and do the snow and ice-clearing job yourself — noting that far more people are killed by climbing onto the roofs of their homes to do the job themselves, than are killed by roofs caving in or collapsing.