‘Nightmare’ at 95 Hess St. as pipes burst in the cold
Residents have faced slew of problems, including no heat
The space heater is glowing at the Care and Share Lounge on the first floor of the beleaguered 95 Hess St. S. apartment building. The pop in the fridge is still warm from the last power outage.
The heat in the building is off, hence the space heater, and there is flooding from numerous burst pipes. Mike Hallman is, in his words, “on my last nerve.”
As manager of the Care and Share Lounge and a resident in the building, he’s been swamped with questions and complaints from people who want answers, and he has all too few to give them. He’s been going around the clock trying to get answers, helping people.
To cap a bad week at the 18-storey building, Friday and Saturday were particularly brutal. A power surge on Friday knocked out the building’s fuses, which turned off the boilers. When that happened, the pipes froze. When the heat came back on, some of those pipes burst.
On Saturday, people were exiting the one working elevator — an improvement over earlier in the week, when no elevators were operating. They were coming out with bags and overnight supplies. Moving out. At least for now.
Some others, such as Candi Pollington, are staying. But no one could blame Pollington if she didn’t.
Earlier in the week, when the power went off, she got stuck in an elevator for one hour and 58 minutes.
“I don’t panic easily, but two hours in the dark, with the alarm blaring in my ears,” she says. The button to turn it off wouldn’t work.”
“On the fourth, third and second floors, the open stairwell was like Niagara Falls,” says city maintenance servicer Dave Gerrie. The burst pipes caused flooding in many parts of the building. “It was cascading.”
The fire department came by twice in the last day.
“It’s just a nightmare,” Hallman says. “It’s all because of the cold” from the deep freeze last week.
“And the cold will be back,” Gerrie adds.
By Saturday, fortunately — if that word is even usable around this building — the temperatures became more bearable, but still many of the almost 300 residents at 95 Hess sought shelter at companion building 181 Jackson — they’re both CityHousing Hamilton properties — where there is Water covers parts of the second-floor hallway at 95 Hess St. S. on Saturday after burst pipes caused flooding.
heat and refuge was being offered in the community centre, along with food and coffee, by the Salvation Army, Good Shepherd and others.
“The hotel (Staybridge) also is putting people up,” Hallman says, adding, “Everyone is pissed off. Tempers are flaring.”
People know it’s not Gerrie and Hallman’s fault, but, Hallman says, “they’ve got to let off steam. Everyone’s burned out. In an older building like this, the pipes will age over the years.”
Hallman and Gerrie say plumbers and other repair people are working in the building, but even once the pipes are patched up, the heat will take a half-day to get up to measure.
The buildings have been beset with problems, and 95 Hess has been in the news before for elevator trouble. But the chaos Saturday was extreme to the point where evacuation was being considered.
“It’s very frustrating,” Ward 2 Coun. Jason Farr says. “These are aging buildings and the problems are not going away without a multimillion-dollar injection.” But at the same time, he adds, budgets are tight.
“Maybe with an election year (federally) we will get some sensitivity” from higher levels of government.
Meanwhile, though she’s planning to stay put for now, Pollington says she will consider looking for a transfer. “Right now I’m keeping warm by moving around a lot (in her apartment) and I get under the covers. The electricity is working, but for a time I didn’t have hot water.”
She hopes the elevator keeps working. “It could have been worse. I was going down to do laundry and I had my basket, which I used to sit on. I didn’t want to sit on the floor.”