Birchwood Terrace resident wonders why they were 'kept in the dark' for weeks before evacuation
CBC
Some residents of a Winnipeg apartment block that was evacuated last week wonder why the building's management didn't say anything about potential safety concerns sooner.
Mala Carriere was at the dance studio that her daughter, Shyanne, works at when they learned that their apartment block, Birchwood Terrace, was being evacuated on Thursday.
The City of Winnipeg ordered the evacuation of the 171-suite building that night, after it says it was notified of a third-party engineering inspection that found serious structural deterioration in columns of the building's parkade.
Mala says it was "complete pandemonium" when she and her daughter got to their apartment building on Thursday.
"It was something that I never thought I'd ever see in my lifetime," she said Monday. "The anxiety level was through the roof, not just for us, but for other people — the crying, the scared looks on peoples' faces — it was hard to stomach."
Mala says work was being done in the building's parkade for about six weeks prior to Thursday.
Residents were told at an information meeting Friday that Birchwood Terrace's management was vaguely aware of a potential evacuation a couple days before the city ordered them to leave, according to Mala.
The city's evacuation order to the building's about 250 tenants cited an engineer consultant's inspection, dated Tuesday, which said it discovered deterioration in the parkade that appeared to affect the stability of the entire building.
Mala says residents should have been notified sooner.
"It's so hard to explain how it feels, that we were kept in the dark," she said.
"Only at one point, we got a memo saying they apologized for the noise for the work that they were doing, but never told us what the work was."
Mala says she and her daughter are now staying in a two-bedroom apartment with her eldest daughter — who has two children of her own — along with their dog, bird and fish.
"We're pretty tight, we're on top of each other. We're living out of bags and it's not easy," she said.
"I want the insanity to end."
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