Dal AC rebounds in wake of fire

Impact to ag campus students expected to be minimal: Gray

Upcoming classes will not be disrupted at the Dalhousie Faculty of Agriculture campus, despite a massive fire in June that destroyed part of the Cox Institute building’s interior, an official says.

According to faculty dean David Gray, space has been leased in the former Seears premises at Truro Mall.

“And that’s going to be used for additional teaching, research and also graduate student space. But the majority of classes and labs this fall will actually remain on our campus,” he said.

“We have enough space on our campus that will allow us to offer the majority of our classes onsite.”

The Alumni Theatre, as well as portions of the athletic centre and the campus library, will be used as temporary class space. Smoke, fire and water damage from the June 20 blaze, combined with the resulting mould and contamination means the entire interior of a section of the building known as Old Cox will have to be completely rebuilt.

The new section of Cox sustained only smoke damage and Gray said efforts are underway to ensure that portion of the building is ready when students return to the campus in September.

But, given the extent of the blaze, which required the services of nine area fire departments to extinguish, the outcome could have been far more grim, Gray said.

“To be fair, we could have been in a much worse situation if it wasn’t for the great work of the fire departments and the emergency services. They did a great job of containing the fire and leaving us with a building that was structurally sound.”

Tenders being issued for the reconstruction of the building call for a completion date of August 2019, he said.

In the meantime, cleanup at the site continues along with efforts to retrieve research data contained within faculty computers.

Gray said all the hard drives have been shipped to a company in Toronto for cleaning and data retrieval and specialists are working to save as much research information as possible.

“And they are very con dent that the data will be recoverable,” he said.

No dollar value has yet been attached to the loss and a spokesperson for the Nova Scotia Fire Marshall’s o ce said the investigation into the cause of the blaze is ongoing.

But Gray said everyone involved is cooperating to ensure the campus is fully ready to proceed as normally as possible when classes resume.

“I would say they are going as well as could be expected. Our priority at the moment is to work collaboratively and ensure there is minimal disruption to our students and to our faculty and our researchers,” he said. “And to be in that situation four weeks on is truly exceptional.”

Updates on the status of the campus recovery are posted on the university’s website, and class timetables are also accessible.

“As of today, our timetable is live, students can access it and students can see that the timetable itself has actually not changed,” the dean said. “The only thing that’s changed is the location of their classes.”