Chief Building Officer (CBO) for the Town of Fort Frances John Burrows was notified around noon on Tuesday that a house under renovation had slipped from its supports.
According to Burrows, the house at 700 Crowe Ave. in the east end of Fort Frances was having its foundation replaced.
“We received a report at around noon today that the house at 700 Crowe had collapsed,” Burrows said.
“We were aware of work being done to the house, and the permit was issued for the replacement of the foundation at this property, upon investigation, after arriving at the scene, it looks to be that there was a failure in the shoring of the house.”
By shoring, Burrows was referring to large blocks of wood used to hold the house up while the foundation is removed and new footings and foundation are poured.
“Taking a look at several components of the shoring, it looks like some of the connections from how the shoring was connected to the house had failed, and there was potential for raking with the shoring, potentially due to wind load, potentially due to snow load, but obviously leading to some raking of the shoring and collapsing structure,” Burrows said.
The Town CBO said he was last on the worksite in December for an inspection, but that work had continued to the point where new footings were ready to be poured, though that process had to be postponed.
“The last time I myself was on site was back in December,” Burrows said.
“We hadn’t been on site to investigate anything or inspect anything since then. The last I’d spoken with the contractor, they were ready to pour the footings for the structure. Talking to the contractor today, there wasn’t any concrete supplies available during this time. So works were delayed up until this point.”
A post by the Fort Frances Fire Rescue department posted about 1 p.m. yesterday said that the members of the department attended the scene in addition to staff from the Public Works Department, Fort Frances Power Corporation and gas company Enbridge.
“After becoming aware of the situation, we had both the fire department come to site as well as public works to barricade off that area,” Burrows said
“Immediately, we wanted to get Power Corp in there, as well as Enbridge, to shut off any services that could lead to more dire impacts. So pretty much as soon as we were made aware of the incident, we already had Enbridge and Power Corp there to shut off the utilities, and got the site barricaded off.”
Burrows said work was not ongoing at the property and the contractor and property owner were contacted to ensure there was no one on site at the time of the collapse.
“The fire department was assessing the site for any signs of people in the building, remaining in the building,” Burrows said.
“We were able to get in touch with the property owner and the contractor, who did state that they didn’t believe anybody to be in the property on site or in the house at the time, but the fire department did want to take extra precautionary efforts to ensure that there wasn’t anybody in the house.”
As a result of the collapse, Burrows is placing an unsafe order on the property which means the structure will have to come down.
“At this time, I will be placing an unsafe order on property, which means that it needs to be immediately remedied,” Burrows said.
“With the unsafe order, it’s going to basically demand that the house be fully demolished at this point. Materials can be salvaged from it, but the house does need to come down for the risk of further collapse into adjacent properties or into public space. From what I know, that is going to be taken care of within the day. If there’s a failure to be demolished within the day, we will be sending our own crew to demolish it in a timely manner, just because we do need to ensure that that house is down and is not posing the risk of collapsing further.”
As of yesterday afternoon there was no obvious risk to the adjacent property, Burrows said.
“At this time, and with engineers on site, there wasn’t anything that alluded to any sort of concerns for the neighboring property,” Burrows said.
“We aren’t seeing any sort of soil settlement in and around the adjacent property owner’s house, so we don’t believe there to be any risk of any collapse onto the neighbor obviously, the property doesn’t look like it’s going to. be spilling onto the neighbor’s property at this time.”
The Fire Department did advise administration at the nearby Robert Moore School to direct as much traffic away from the site of the collapse as possible, Burrows said.
“The fire department proceeded with advising the school of the incident and getting them to guide traffic for pickup of the students away from that site,” Burrows added.
“What we don’t want is an abundance of kids and the public utilizing the sidewalk in front of there. We want to maintain clear and easy access for the fire department, for contractors until the site is safe and not at risk for the public to be harmed. Obviously, when things are construction sites, the risk of danger and physical damage is exacerbated when it is something like this, where we have an unsecured structure that has the potential for further collapse. We do want people to stay out of that perimeter that’s been established by the fire department. So the school has been advised on that the pickup location has been slightly adjusted so that it’s away from that street, and hopefully students are advised and guided to be away from that street as well.”
