ELMIRA, N.Y. (WETM) — An Elmira gas station is back open after strong winds on Tuesday ripped a part of the roof off the structure, blowing the material out into the roadway, and closing the store for two days.

According to Gurpreet Singh, one of the workers at Sammy’s Quick Stop, he said that on Tuesday he was going to close the door to the store that was being blown open by the high winds. As he was doing so, he said he heard a loud lightning-like sound coming from just outside the building.

“As soon as I went to get the door I just saw the roof on the street,” Singh said. “It knocked out our power supply over there, for NYSEG, and that thing started sparking up and it was smoking,” he said.

Singh added that he immediately called 911 for what happened after fearing that a fire might start, commending them as they came to the scene very quickly.

Singh said that there were only a couple of leaks that happened to the inside of the store as a result of the roof coming off and that a roofing company will be taking care of that damage.

The store was shut down completely for two days as a result of the incident.

“I’m just glad it was sooner rather than later,” Singh said, commenting on the store being shut down. “They got it done as soon as they can, and the rest is because it was an unsafe structure basically,” he said, talking about the repair work, “there was nothing we could do physically to get it done, we gotta go by the rules,” he said.

The portion of the roof that was ripped off still needs to be repaired, but for now, it has a large tarp over the top that was put on by the roofing company, making sure that everything is watertight and safe.