Hotel removes deadly panels
Amid tighter inspection regulations, hotel removes concrete slabs from façade
FOUR YEARS AFTER LéA GUILBEAULT WAS KILLED by a piece of concrete that fell from a hotel on Peel St., and only months after changes to Quebec’s building code aimed at preventing similar tragedies,
workers have removed all the slabs from the building’s façade, Katherine Wilton reports.
More than four years after a Montreal woman was crushed by a slab of concrete that fell from the façade of a downtown hotel, construction workers have removed all the concrete panels from the Marriott Residence Inn as part of a multimillion-dollar hotel renovation.
As concrete slabs were lowered onto a flatbed truck on Peel St. last week, the memory of Léa Guilbeault’s death in 2009 still resonated with some downtown office workers.
“One of those pieces fell on that woman,” an office worker reminded her friend as they walked past the crane that was removing the panels.
Guilbeault and her husband, Hani Beitinjaneh, were seated at a corner table in a restaurant patio when a large concrete slab fell 18 storeys off the face of the hotel, crashing through the glass roof. Guilbeault, 33, was killed and her husband was seriously injured.
Guilbeault’s death became emblematic of Montreal’s crumbling infrastructure and led to calls for more stringent building maintenance guidelines that would require owners to have their facades inspected more often.
In March, Quebec’s Régie du bâtiment announced longawaited changes to the province’s building safety code designed to prevent future fatalities from crumbling buildings and multi-leval garages.
The new rules require property owners to inspect their buildings and facades every five years.
Owners of buildings that are five storeys or higher will have to get an architect or an engineer to inspect their facades for things such as rust stains or cracks. Inspections will have to be completed between 2015 and 2018, depending on the age of the building. The changes will affect about 3,650 buildings in the province.
Owners of multi-level parking garages also must get the garages inspected once every five years. Inspections will have to be completed between 2014 and 2016, depending on the age of the building.
The new security measures for garages were brought in after a concrete slab fell on the roof of a car in a St-Laurent parking garage in 2008, killing Mahamat Saleh Khazali.
The changes follow the recommendations of Quebec coroner Jacques Ramsay, who criticized Quebec’s lax building maintenance rules in his 2010 report on Guilbeault’s death.
The previous rules said owners were responsible for maintaining their buildings, but didn’t spell out how that should be done.
Under the new law, copies of the inspections must be kept in a file on the property and be available for consultation by building inspectors, city officials, the fire department and engineers or architects who may want to consult previous inspections, said Sylvain Lamothe, a spokesman for the Régie de bâtiment.
Building owners who repeatedly refuse to have their buildings inspected can be fined or taken to court, but Lamothe said that is a last resort.
“We are not there to strong arm them,” he said. “We are there to help make sure they respect the new law.”
The new rules are being enforced across the province by 44 inspectors, Lamothe said.
The Marriott Residence Inn, which is a tenant in the Peel St. building where Guilbeault was killed, announced in October it is undergoing a major renovation that includes replacing the façade.
Sonia Grenier, the hotel’s director of operations, said the decision to replace the facade had nothing to do with the accident that killed Guilbeault.
“We have new owners,” she said, adding she couldn’t answer any other questions.
Anyone who is worried about the safety of a building can call the Régie de bâtiment at 1-800-361-0761.