Maryland Street apartment block to be demolished

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This article was published 09/01/2020 (2157 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A fire in a vacant, boarded-up apartment building on Maryland Street may have been started by squatters looking for a place to spend the night as the mercury dipped to -17 C, a city fire chief said Thursday.

The building, at 426 Maryland St., will be demolished following Wednesday night’s blaze, the third fire in the building in a year.

Fire Chief Mark Reshaur said although the cause of the fire is under investigation, the electrical and gas systems had been turned off in the building.

“As the weather gets colder, squatters are breaking into vacant buildings seeking shelter,” Reshaur told reporters Thursday.

“As a result of their activities and trying to keep warm in these buildings, fires are occurring,” he said. “And that’s reflective of a much larger social problem that we’re experiencing in the city. When you get a fire in a vacant building, it burns longer before the fire gets discovered.”

Rechaur said although the building sustained significant damage in the January 2019 fires, it was not structurally compromised and didn’t pose a danger to the community. The fire department only has the authority to order demolition under those circumstances.

“We demolish buildings if that building is structurally compromised, and it’s an imminent life hazard for people in the community,” he said.

Maryland Street, which is one-way southbound, was closed on Thursday because mounds of ice were on the road as a result of the building being hosed down.

At about 7:40 p.m. Wednesday, neighbours noticed smoke billowing from the building and called the fire department. Crews were unable to safely battle the blaze from inside the building because of damage it sustained in the two fires last year.

In Winnipeg, 570 structures are listed under the city’s vacant building program, said Winston Yee, the manager of community bylaw enforcement services.

Those buildings are subject to the vacant building bylaw. Owners are slapped with escalating fees for boarded-up buildings, annual inspection fees, and tickets for unremedied offences. The city has also introduced an empty building fee for long-term vacant buildings, in which owners are charged one per cent of the most recent assessed value on an annual basis.

Despite those efforts, fires are frequently started in vacant buildings.

“Anecdotally, I can say we’ve had a lot more trouble with fires in vacant buildings,” Reshaur said.

Of those 570 vacant structures, 22 are in the same neighbourhood as the Maryland Street building; 48 are in the nearby Daniel McIntyre and Spence neighbourhoods, city data show.

Firefighters have increasingly been called to the area to fight blazes in occupied and vacant buildings.

On Christmas Day, a century-old apartment block on Agnes Street went up in flames, forcing more than 30 residents to find a new home after the building needed to be demolished. That same day, an apartment block at 485 Furby St. was evacuated because of a fire inside. The building caught fire again on Jan. 6.

The fires have begun to take a psychological toll on residents in central neighbourhoods. Cherice Liebrecht, who lives across from 485 Furby St., helped people escape from the building on Jan. 6. She said the stress caused by the fires is constant.

“That was probably my third time coming out to help during a fire in that building,” she said this week.

“The abandoned houses are a cause of a lot of anxiety in the neighbourhood, too,” she said. “They keep going up in flames. They’re not safe and we’re getting fed up. They’re hideous, they’re dangerous, and they’re a slap in the face to all the people who need affordable, safe housing.”

She said her building is well-managed, but she still worries about her security and safety as a result of the recent fires.

“I’m worried my apartment will be next,” she said.

ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca

Fire appears to be stubborn and difficult to contain. pic.twitter.com/JlyBtREgdd

— Ben Waldman (@BenjWaldman) January 9, 2020