Stop & Shop in Uncasville opened a little after 11 a.m. today, after being closed during the monring. The store closed when people noticed cracking in beams inside, Fire Marshal Ray Occhialini said.
Store Manager Denise Provost said the store was closed as a precaution while the roof was being cleared.
Provost had hoped the store would open around noon; it opened earlier.
In the morning, Provost and other Stop & Shop workers patrolled the parking lot, stopping cars before people could park and get out.
"An engineer has come and is trying to figure out the snowload," Occhialini said this morning He added that the number of skylights on the building - at least 60, he said - makes the job more complex.
And with more snow predicted, "it's just going to get worse," Occhialini said.
Suzi Robinson, who works for the corporate Stop & Shop office in Braintree, Mass., says that with all the snow this winter, Stop & Shop is "monitoring our stores every single day."
"It's the nature of what's going on," she said this morning. "We are looking at snow delth, clearing snow to alleviate weight loads, checking drains and gutters to make sure the snowmelt is running off."
In addition, she said, in-store teams are walking the stores to look at what's happening on the ground.
"We've put a lot of precautions in place," she said. "We've been working 24-7. We're doing everything we can."
The town and schools are doing everything they can, too, Occhialini said, to make sure town buildings are safe. Workers are shoveling snow off all the school roofs in town, he said. They will work all weekend to get snow off. "Not the entire roof needs to be shoveled," he said, but a bulk of the snow will be removed.
