Elliot Lake’s Lester B. Pearson Civic Centre will remain closed for the foreseeable future, city CAO Dan Gagnon told council at its meeting Monday evening.
The closure was put in place by a Ministry of Labour order after a portion of the centre roof collapsed last Thursday evening on the theatre area of the building. No injuries occurred in the collapse.
Gagnon said the winter weather with snow and rain and temperature swings has been “very taxing” on city resources clearing snow from streets and intersections.
“All of our municipal buildings were designed to withstand northern Ontario winters including the civic centre when it was renovated in the nineties. It’s been clearly an eye-opener with last week’s collapse for us and other commercial building owners in town we can see that on the roof tops in the community and at the Blind River hospital. We understand the gravity of the situation and we’re doing all we can to recover and respond to the collapse.”
Gagnon said the city has done its best to keep the media and public informed.
“Structural engineers were on the scene Friday… and the Ministry of Labour is investigating. “In the meantime no one can enter the building for the foreseeable future, certainly not the theatre area and at this point in time there is no access for any of us into the civic centre and it will be like that for some point in time. An order has been issued by the Ministry of Labour,” Gagnon said.
The city is expecting an engineers’ preliminary report on the state of the building, particularly the area not directly affected by the collapse, in the near future.
“We have no idea of when or to what degree we’ll be able to enter the building to retrieve anything,” he added.
Gagnon said the city is concentrating its efforts on resuming municipal services that were disrupted by the collapse with its recreation and cultural departments moved to city hall. The city is also prepared to work with civic centre tenants to find alternative locations to operate and plans are in the works for a meeting with tenants later this week. He did not give any details on when the meeting will take place.
He said a contractor, with specialized equipment for roof snow removal, will be in place Tuesday. The Collins Hall will be the first building where snow removal will take place to allow the recreation department to be relocated there. The pool will be the next facility and the arena will be the last facility to have snow removed from the roof because of its size.
All three facilities remain closed at this time.
According to the CAO, the Espanola pool will honour swim passes of Elliot Lake residents and arrangements are being made with Blind River to accommodate ice time for the Junior A Wildcats.
Staff and volunteers are also being offered trauma services, he said.
Mayor Dan Marchisella said he had reviewed an engineering study done on the building in 2017 that forecast the civic centre roof was sound for the next 10 years.
Gagnon thanked the work done by staff and volunteers since the collapse happened and vowed to keep the community up to date on work being done.
Councillor Sandy Finamore also thanked the people who have worked since the collapsed and singled out the fire department for its quick response immediately following the collapse.