Sarnia's mayor believes "lessons were learned" when part of the Lambton Mall's roof collapsed on this date 20 years ago.
The flat roof buckled, from the weight of heavy snow that had been accumulating for days, near the Hallmark store at around 8:30 a.m. on December 14, 2000.
Susan Foster, 47, was killed and another mall employee was slightly injured.
Mike Bradley remembers the day vividly.
"The emergency group was notified and everyone was dealing with a lot of inquiries from the public, it was an international story, it was a tragedy because of the loss of life and lessons were learned," said Bradley. "Immediately, the city started cleaning off all the roofs that had a lot of snow on them, and that was happening right across the country because of the tragedy in Sarnia and I think that's continued to this day. If you have a flat roof, do not allow snow to gather on it to the point where the building will suffer a collapse."
Bradley said the timing could have been much worse.
"Despite the fact there was a loss of life, which was tragic, if the collapse had occurred a half-an-hour to an hour later, there would have been mass casualties, because it was the Christmas season and the mall hadn't opened at that point."