A car shop was crushed when its sign collapsed during a blizzard in northeastern China.

Video taken in Shenyang City, Liaoning province on November 10 shows the store’s ceiling crumpled and weighed down by the sign and heavy snow.

The owner said he invested more than a million yuan in the car dealership, but lost around 700,000 to 800,000 yuan after the incident. He added that the quality of the building’s construction may have contributed to its collapse.

Parts of northern China were hit by record snowfall this week, disrupting public transportation and sparking concerns over an unreliable power supply throughout winter.

A cold front moving from west to east across the country caused temperatures to plummet by as much as 14 degrees. Meteorological departments in China’s northeastern regions, where more than 20 inches of snow was reported, have raised a red snowstorm alert – the highest level in China’s four-tiered warning system.

State media said at least one person has died in Tongliao City, Inner Mongolia. The Beijing Meteorological Bureau said the winter weather struck around a month earlier than usual. Temperatures on Sunday fell to some of their lowest for the period in the past decade.

Local news magazine China News Weekly said the snowfall was the worst to hit northern China since 1951. Meanwhile, the national weather bureau forecasted the chill to abate over the weekend as the cold front weakens.