How far is quality and safety?

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Nearly a thousand square meters of the roof of a supermarket in Nanjing collapsed http://www.sina.com.cn January 20, 2008, 04:02 Southern Metropolis Daily. According to our report, yesterday morning, nearly a thousand square meters of the steel structure roof of a large supermarket on Taixi Road in Pukou, Nanjing, suddenly collapsed. Due to the slow rate of collapse, customers and staff in the supermarket were able to evacuate safely, with no one injured in the incident. After the collapse, no one in the supermarket called the police; the person in charge of the supermarket pulled down the roll-up door and left. It was not until after 12 p.m. that day, when a large part of the roof collapsed, that citizens called the police. 　　At around 10 a.m. yesterday, Mr. Chen, a local resident, was shopping at the Times Lianhua supermarket on Tai West Road when, suddenly, with a loud crack, a piece of the ceiling near the inside of the supermarket fell down and hit the floor. Mr. Chen was shocked; when he looked up, the steel-framed ceiling was creaking noisily. Several salespeople ran over, realized that something was wrong, and immediately asked Mr. Chen and the other customers to leave quickly. Mr. Chen said that it was snowing heavily in Pukou that morning, there were few customers coming to the supermarket, and not many salespeople either; a few minutes later they all ran outside. A supervisor from the supermarket pulled down the rolling shutter and left with the staff. 　　More than two hours later, a business located next to the supermarket suddenly heard a loud rumbling noise. She went outside and saw that the sign above the supermarket’s entrance had fallen backward, while there were sounds of things being crushed coming from inside the supermarket. The pedestrians on the street also stopped in their tracks; through the supermarket’s glass windows, they saw that the roof had collapsed. After a citizen called the police, four police cars and two fire trucks arrived at the scene. A firefighter broke a hole in the glass display window to enter the supermarket, but found no one inside; he then covered the hole with a plank and left. The police then set up a cordon at the entrance of the supermarket. 　　At the scene, the reporter saw that the signboard at a height of 5 or 6 meters above the supermarket entrance was tilted backward, and the right end of the blue rolling door had also fallen down. In the corridor, a fluorescent light was hanging in mid-air, suspended by a wire. Through the glass display case, it was possible to see that the shelves and shopping carts inside the supermarket were crushed under the collapsed roof, with the metal structure on the ceiling pressing tightly against the shelves and tables. In front of the supermarket, the reporter saw no staff members. 　　The reporter went to the top floor of a residential building next to the supermarket and found that the entire supermarket covered an area of about 2,000 square meters, with the collapsed section being the central roof, covering nearly 1,000 square meters. The supermarket’s roof is made of blue metal sheets, with a layer of snow covering it; however, the snow doesn’t seem very thick, and the protrusions on the blue roof are still clearly visible. Local residents say that this supermarket began construction last May, with a roof being built over the old walls, and it opened by mid-August. 　　“It might be because of the snow. ”The residents speculated on the reasons for the collapse, but they believed that there might have been issues with the quality of the supermarket’s roof, as several months earlier, during strong winds in Nanjing, the steel plates at the back of the supermarket’s entrance were completely lifted off. At present, the cause of the accident is under investigation.