DID STRAY BUTT SPARK CONDO BLAZE?
The City of Edmonton is awaiting a structural engineer’s assessment of the Westin Edmonton Hotel’s facade, a portion of which crumbled into the parking lot on Sunday, forcing rooms to be evacuated.
Eugene Gyorfi, director of building permits and inspection services, said that the hotel has an engineer looking into the situation and the city is not involved at the moment.
“Once the building is under construction, we have inspectors that do go to the site,” Gyorfi said. “Ongoing building maintenance and operations is the responsibility of the building owner and is not something that the city gets involved with.”
No cause has yet been determined. “We don’t see failures like this on a typical basis; it’s very, very rare because our buildings are constructed safely and are inspected,” he said.
Gyorfi said changes to the building codes for brick masonry facades mean that its unclear exactly under which version of the code the facade was constructed.
Lana Uytterhagen, director of sales and marketing with the hotel, said that it is “back to business as usual.” All guest rooms are operational, although three small rooms for functions have been closed as a precautionary measure.
“Timing is good for us, however, because it’s not a really busy time for function space,” Uytterhagen said. “Just to be overcautious, we’re taking those out of service right now.”
She also said a construction crew was already on-site.
At around 10:30 a.m. Monday, a van with the name Maxim Group, a general contracting and building restoration company, was parked in the south parking lot where the wall fell.
The collapse occurred just after 10 a.m. Sunday, and brought 20 firefighters to the scene. No injuries were reported. Two lanes were closed Monday morning on the northbound side of 100th Street, blocked off with orange fencing. Traffic flowed through the one open lane.
“There’s a big fence out there to protect everyone, just in case there’s a fear of any more bricks falling. We don’t think so, but again, we’re being overly cautious,” Uytterhagen said.
Gyorfi said that a hoarding permit application is underway so the sidewalk may be covered by an enclosed tunnel, which would then allow the lanes to reopen.
“We hope that within a couple of days they’ll be able to have that hoarding constructed,” Gyorfi said.
Traffic was open along Jasper Avenue and 99th Street, both of which had been were blocked on Sunday but reopened toward the evening.
“We’re just very fortunate that we’re able to move forward so quickly,” Uytterhagen said.