Stressed-out and fed up Tenants desperately shift out of Portage Avenue block deemed structurally unsafe By: Malak Abas Posted: 4:14 PM CDT Friday, May. 10, 2024

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This article was published 10/05/2024 (534 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Viola Bourassa had to make tough decisions about what to leave behind from the suite she has called home for five years as she raced to move out with just 12 hours’ notice.

The 69-year-old and her sister, 71, shuttled bags of clothes and necessities from their apartment in Birchwood Terrace to their van, using a walker for support.

Bourassa is one of 250 residents who were suddenly ordered to evacuate the 2440 Portage Ave. complex Thursday evening after engineers determined it was at risk of collapsing due to deteriorating beams. The City of Winnipeg issued a vacate order and officials knocked on tenants’ doors and told them to pack up.

By 8 a.m. Friday, Winnipeg Police Service and Winnipeg Fire and Paramedic Service officials were on hand to help tenants move.

Bourassa said some of her furniture will have to be left behind, but she’s reluctant to abandon sentimental items.

“I had a knee replacement. I can’t even climb around to take my pictures down,” she said. “So I just left them on the walls.”

By 8:30 a.m., the atmosphere at Birchwood Terrace was bleak. Half a dozen police officers walked in and out of the building while people of all ages dragged out suitcases and garbage bags filled with belongings.

A Winnipeg Transit bus was waiting outside to shuttle people with nowhere to go to a nearby hotel, where a reception centre had been set up to connect them to support services.

Tenants gathered in the lobby, some were noticeably panicked and others were exhausted. A woman with a cat carrier under each arm struggled to stay awake. Nearby, an overfilled shopping cart was used as a makeshift carrier for personal belongings.

“I had a knee replacement. I can’t even climb around to take my pictures down. So I just left them on the walls.”–Viola Bourassa

The notice received by tenants Thursday night included a list of nearby apartment complexes, including monthly rent and other details. Also attached was an evacuation checklist that recommended items tenants remove from their suites, and information on how to prepare family members and pets for the evacuation.

Bourassa learned she’d have to leave when she got home from dining out with her sister and was given a memo explaining the structural problems with the building.

For now, she’ll stay with her granddaughter.

“I was actually crying (Thursday), and I was crying this morning on my balcony,” she said. “Especially with my condition, it’s very hard.”

Other tenants say their stay at Birchwood hasn’t been pleasant and the evacuation was a long time coming, although the short notice was irritating.

Stacy Pawluk said construction work began on the parkade under the building about a month ago, and that many tenants were unaware asbestos was being removed.

“It was absolutely ridiculous, the air quality that was in that garage, nobody should have been breathing that,” he said.

He said the water supply lines were being replaced in some units. In his, black mould was found, but management did not offer alternative accommodations or prioritize removal of the mould.

Pawluk, who plans to stay with a family member in Emerson, said he believes the building was unsafe long before Thursday’s vacate order.

“It’s pretty disgusting the way we’ve been treated through this entire thing,” he said.

Owners of about 40 homes on nearby Assiniboine Crescent, a tidy street that hugs the river, received a shocking warning from the city Thursday evening.

“Get ready to leave on short notice,” says the memo signed by Jason Shaw, deputy chief of emergency management for the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service.

The notice advises that the home is in immediate proximity to an evacuation zone and that people may “receive limited notice due to rapidly changing conditions” should they be asked to evacuate.

The notice says the alert is in place until further notice and to contact 311 if homeowner’s have any questions.

Nancy Cousins, who received one of the warnings, said she wishes more information was available about why homes on her street are at risk.

“They’re not telling us, and I think that they should be,” she said.

“I know the vintage of these homes, we all have asbestos… I think they need to be giving us more information.”

Another neighbour, Jan Pedersen, said he hopes they received the memo as an “over-abundance of caution” and commended the city and building management for catching the structural issue before anyone was hurt.

“Will we have kind of an escape bag ready to go? We’re thinking about it, we probably will do something, put some essentials in a quick, easy-to-find place,” he said.

“But what the hazard is, I suppose, that information will come to us later. I hope it does.”

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca

Malak Abas
Reporter

Malak Abas is a city reporter at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg’s North End, she led the campus paper at the University of Manitoba before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Malak.

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