Interlake-Eastern health authority launches $1.55-M lawsuit over flooded health facilities

The Interlake-Eastern Regional Health Authority has launched a $1.55-million lawsuit after a sprinkler froze and flooded a facility with a health clinic and personal care home.

In a statement of claim filed in Manitoba Court of King’s Bench one day before the second anniversary of the flooding on Nov. 25, 2023, the health authority alleges Parkwest Projects, the construction manager, as well as Freedom Fire, Bison Fire Protection and Alliance Engineering Services, were all negligent in planning, installing and maintaining the dry fire suppression system in the attic of the single-storey Whitemouth District Health Centre.

“Interlake has sustained extensive losses and damages including the costs to inspect, clean, repair, rebuild and/or replace damages caused by the incident,” the lawsuit says.

A health authority spokesperson would not comment further on the matter, because it is before the courts, but notices in the local newspaper, the Clipper Weekly, at the time show the facilities lab and electrocardiogram services were shut down and its public health services was temporarily relocated to Lac du Bonnet.

Whitemouth is located about 110 kilometres east of Winnipeg.

Patients attempting to access primary-care services at the flooded facility were told to book an appointment at the Pinawa Clinic, about 40 kilometres away or, if a same-day appointment was needed, to go to the Selkirk Quick Care, an 85-kilometre trip.

Two months later ,some services, including primary care, were temporarily housed in the Whitemouth Community Club.

The facility didn’t reopen for about six months.

A spokesman for Parkwest Projects which, in the past, has constructed several health-related projects, including a second-floor addition at the Gimli Hospital for a hemodialysis unit, the Giigewigamig Traditional Healing Centre at the Powerview-Pine Falls Health Centre and the emergency room development project at Seven Oaks Hospital, did not respond to a Free Press request for comment.

Representatives from Freedom Fire, Bison Fire Protection and Alliance Engineering Services, said they would not be commenting on the lawsuit.

The provincial government announced in 2018 the sprinkler system would be installed as one of more than 120 projects it was funding at a cost of nearly $30 million at health-care facilities across Manitoba.

Then-health minister Kelvin Goertzen said the investments would “ensure that sites continue to meet provincial, national and international standards and keep facilities in good repair.”

But the sprinkler system at the Whitemouth facility, which was completed in October 2022, froze and ruptured, resulting in extensive damage to the building, including ceilings, hallways, residential rooms in the personal-care home part of the facility, as well as clinical areas.

The health authority claims the rupture was caused, in part, by the installation of an inadequate or deficient sprinkler system, by damaging the system while it was being installed, and by hiring “incompetent contractors, agents and/or employees whom it knew, or ought to have known, were not capable of properly conducting the tasks for which they were hired.”

No statements of defence have been filed and the matter has not been tested in court.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca