SAFETY COMES FIRST
Calgarians can be forgiven for assuming they were always safer downtown than they actually were. After all, how could it be that in a progressive world- class city like Calgary, there never was a bylaw outlining the standards for building maintenance?
The issue came to the fore last year when the wall of a six- storey building at 6th Avenue and 7th Street S. W. began collapsing, with bricks falling to the ground. It wasn’t an abandoned building, either; at the time of the wall’s collapse, people were at work in offices inside.
A new bylaw, requiring that buildings five storeys or higher must undergo regular maintenance, finally comes before council in the fall. Marco Civitarese, the city’s chief building official, says of the bylaw, “It’s time for this to happen.” He said that “the forefront thought is public safety.”
Pardon us for assuming that such a bylaw had been in place for years and that public safety had long been assured. Apparently not, and now Calgary is playing catch- up to cities like Vancouver and Montreal, which have bylaws in place regarding the maintenance of building exteriors. Yet, Calgary didn’t even start developing a bylaw until May 2014, when the aforementioned, 56- year- old downtown building’s exterior crumbled, crushing parked cars below, but fortunately injuring no one.
Civitarese says the idea for a bylaw existed before that, but was highlighted when a 2011 windstorm blew pieces of downtown building roofs to the ground. More recently, some sandstone chunks fell off the Fairmont Palliser.
That a city doesn’t require maintenance to buildings is truly incredible, and the string of incidents are enough to make anyone cast nervous glances upwards as they walk through downtown streets. The cavalier attitude toward citizens’ safety, represented by the lack of a bylaw for so long, is astonishing. Equally astonishing is the current laissez faire approach in which maintenance is done to buildings after there’s a problem, not before.
The city is just lucky that no one’s been killed by an improperly maintained building suddenly giving way — the tragedy that killed three- yearold Michelle Krsek in 2009 was the result of loose building materials flying away, not an existing structure crumbling.
“We’ve been involved with numerous industry stakeholders, we’ve got all sorts of envelope specialists, engineers, consultants in the room with us looking at these things,” Civitarese said.
This should have been done years ago. But let’s look now through the windshield rather than into the rear- view mirror. Better late than never. The bylaw should be passed so Calgarians do indeed have some basis for believing they’re safe when they’re walking around downtown.