A pane of glass crashed down from a 20th floor balcony of a residential skyscraper in Vancouver’s Coal Harbour neighbourhood Thursday, showering the sidewalk below with bits of glass.

Sarah Farage was working in her family’s restaurant on Bute near Melville Street when she heard a crash on the roof directly above her around 11:30 a.m.

"All you hear is a big glass shattering," she said. "It looked like hail falling, and when I came outside I noticed it was glass."

Farage says the entire sidewalk was covered in tiny pieces of glass and some parked cars had minor damage, but no one was injured.

When Farage went outside and looked up, she says she saw a work crew on a motorized platform about two-thirds of the way up The Melville, a 141-metre tall condo building.

Stephen Lam, senior strata manager with First Service Residential told CTV News on Friday morning he still doesn’t have a detailed report on exactly what happened.

"It wasn’t the window washer," Lam said, "It was the [building] envelope contractor," which he said had been doing work on the exterior since July 2018.

Rashad Sheikh with Columbia Seal told CTV News the company had been doing work to renew and seal balconies at the time of the accident.

He explained the company is now working with WorkSafeBC on a "near miss investigation" and putting together a corrective action plan so a similar incident doesn’t happen again.

Sheikh said the workers were on a swing stage when something made contact with the top edge of the glass. He said the glass is tempered and shattered on contact.

"Nobody got hurt, so thank God for that," Sarah Farage said.

The City of Vancouver says an inspector discovered the work on the balcony was being done without proper permits.

A stop work order has been issued and the city says it's working with the building's owner to ensure correct permits are obtained before work is allowed to continue.