A fleeting first visit back home ‘emotional’ for blast evacuees
Some residents affected by the Mississauga explosion allowed short supervised visits Monday
The inhabitants of 69 residences in Mississauga still can’t go home almost a week after an explosion levelled a neighbour’s house.
Some residents donned hard hats to cross yellow police tape Monday and be escorted by city staff to pick up some of their belongings from their damaged houses. Peel Regional Police officers helped one woman rescue her precious potted geraniums from her garden and moved them to a friend’s yard down the street.
There is no date set for when people will be allowed back, but Mississauga Fire Chief Tim Beckett said it will “vary from days to months.”
“The house where the explosion occurred is no longer there,” he told reporters. Two homes on either side of that house, at 4201 Hickory Dr., were so damaged they have been deemed unsafe and likely will be torn down, Beckett said.
Building department officials, engineers and insurance workers are now assessing damage to other buildings. Hundreds of metres away, a highrise apartment building’s windows, shattered in the explosion, are still boarded up.
Some 700 residences were evacuated immediately after the explosion destroyed the house, near Dixie Rd. and Rathburn Rd. E., last week. On Monday, some were allowed 15-minute, supervised visits back to their homes.
“This is the first time in six days that some of these people have been allowed back in,” Beckett said. “This is an emotional time for them.”
Meanwhile, handwriting experts try to determine who wrote bizarre, handwritten notes found on Hickory Dr., said Peel police Sgt. Josh Colley. The Star has reported that notes found in the debris included the message: “Dear God, as of next week everything will fall apart for us.”
The Ontario Fire Marshal’s office has concluded an on-site investigation and is now analyzing all evidence collected from the scene, Colley said.
“They are looking at all documents, all evidence that has been collected,” Colley said, adding that they don’t know when it will be determined if the blast was accidental or deliberate.
“We want to make sure that we analyze all of the evidence and are certain of the cause,” Colley said.
Police have concluded that the two bodies found at the blast site are those of Robert Nadler and his spouse Diane Page, both 55.
Nadler was convicted in 1982 of murdering his best friend in a fight over money, and then burying him in a shallow grave in a bush near Golden Orchard Dr. in Mississauga.
Page’s family, meanwhile, has set up a GoFundMe page to crowdfund for funeral expenses. “Due to estrangement and financial hardship, we request public assistance for basic funeral costs to . . . lay her to rest respectfully and with love,” read the page.