555 replies to this topic

[Victoria Watcher]

Ashley MacDonald has been waiting a year for answers about why she and other residents of a Langford high-rise had to move out with little notice after the building’s occupancy permit was revoked.

 

MacDonald was one of an estimated 130 residents of the 11-storey RidgeView Place, formerly called Danbrook One, who were forced out of their homes on April 24, 2023, when the city pulled the occupancy permit over structural concerns.

 

The city and owner Centurion Property Associates Inc. did not reveal any details about concerns with the building, which had been completed in January 2019 and received an occupancy permit the following month. Centurion agreed to buy the building on April 25, 2019.

 

It was the second time in four years the city had pulled the occupancy permit for the Claude Road structure and residents were urged to leave the building immediately because of investigations by the Engineers and Geoscientists of B.C. into structural flaws.

 

In December 2019, residents were told the engineering association had opened an investigation when an engineer who was not involved in the project raised concerns about the design.

 

 

 

https://www.timescol...gh-rise-8643879

 

 

 

MacDonald said she hasn’t received any information from Centurion or the city since about a week after she moved out. She wants to know what was wrong with the building and what has been done to ensure this situation is not repeated for a third time.

 

“We want the answers, and more than that, I think we deserve the answers,” she said.

 

MacDonald filed a complaint with the Residential Tenancy Branch to recoup about $4,000 in costs incurred from moving and staying in hotels after losing her home. She found out in January her complaint was unsuccessful.

 

Centurion offered $2,500 in assistance to each unit after emptying the building.

 

In addition to the lost money, the incident has shaken her sense of safety, MacDonald said. Recently, she noticed a tiny crack in the drywall in her new apartment, which sparked fears that her new home could be unsafe.

 

“That’s part of why it’s so disheartening that we haven’t had an answer,” MacDonald said. “It has taken a toll on my emotional state.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maybe she needs to move past this?

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 24 April 2024 - 04:47 AM.

[aastra]

 

Maybe she needs to move past this?

 

Exactly. As the years pass and pile up into decades we just need to accept the incontrovertible fact that the building was incredibly unsafe. Ideally it would be preserved and maintained as an eternal monument to unsafe construction.

[Victoria Watcher]

Shore it up then do so, yes. Maybe an interpretive plaque can be installed.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 24 April 2024 - 11:29 AM.

[aastra]

 

Maybe an interpretive plaque can be installed.

 

Better to err on the safe side and install two plaques, for structural redundancy.

[LJ]

If it is just not up to current seismic requirements, just have the residents sign a waiver to that effect. A whole bunch of older buildings don't meet today's code either.

 

If it is something more than that - tear it down.

[Blair M.]

If you go back a few pages in this thread, AllJetNoPilot posted detailed links to the specifics of all that's wrong with the building. 

In a nutshell, the various professional reports indicate that there are so many separate things wrong with the building, it would seem either a partial or complete tear-down will be the eventual outcome, despite such a radical end-game likely being many years down the road due to the assorted financial and liability entanglements identified to date.

[spanky123]

^ Agreed. If it could have been fixed it would have been by now.

 

If it wasn't for the potential for the Langford taxpayer to be on the hook I would just write this off as a dispute between two commercial parties that is going to likely take years to resolve.

[aastra]

 

Maybe she needs to move past this?

 

Consider all of the people everywhere who have lived in houses or buildings for some duration, and then moved out, and then learned that the house or building suffered a serious fire at some later date.

Consider all of the people everywhere who have driven in a car or bus or flown in a plane that suffered a serious accident at some later date.

Consider all of the people everywhere who have used a bridge that suffered a serious issue at some later date.

Consider all of the people everywhere who have patronized a store or business that suffered a violent robbery or had a car drive through the front window at some later date when they themselves were not present.

Hundreds of millions of people all over the world. Consider all of the people everywhere who have walked under a tree that fell down at some later date.

 

If the unfortunate incident happened shortly after your exit then sure, you would probably spend some time pondering it.

But if the incident happened years later? Are we expecting a large portion of the world's population to be feeling traumatized all the time?*

In the case of Danbrook One, even if disaster were to happen tomorrow the residents were still clear of it by a full year.

 

*spoiler alert... ah, forget it.

[AllJetNoPilot]

EGBC has posted the consent order related to the remediation work, which gives a little bit of insight into why the second evacuation happened.

https://www.egbc.ca/...-publishing.pdf

 

No details really provided on the building, only related to engineering conduct.

[Mike K.]

So this determination outlines that the repairs were not adequately inspected by a third party for confirmation of the work?

The language is a little inside baseball-y.

[Fox]

My reading of it is that Mr Tran

 

Mr. Tran admits that, in connection with the Building and the Remediation Work, he demonstrated professional misconduct by failing to advise the City of Langford that his review of the design of the Building and his design of remediation measures for 2 the structural elements of the Building was limited to addressing those items identified in an external review report prepared by a third-party engineering firm (the “Report”) in circumstances where the Report expressly stated that it was not a comprehensive review of the Building, and recommended a complete detailed review of the Building design that he had not completed.

did not notify the city of Langford that his review of the design and remediation measures for the "two structural elements of the building" was limited to only those design and remediation methods identified by a 3rd party report.  The 3rd party report was not comprehensive and recommended further investigation.  It would seem he did not notify the city of this limited scope.

 

This is thus contrary to the code of ethics of duty to protect, as specified in point 5:

 

The conduct set out above at paragraph 4 is contrary to Principle 1 of the Engineers and Geoscientists BC Code of Ethics, as it stood at the time, which required that all members and licensees shall hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public, the protection of the environment and promote health and safety within the workplace.

 

 

So my takeaway is that it was determined that by not informing the city that his work was only based on items disclosed from a limited 3rd party report, he violated the engineer's code of conduct in respect to the safety of the public.

Edited by Fox, 22 October 2024 - 10:33 AM.

[AllJetNoPilot]

Yeah, basically. As an Engineer, the city relies on his professional judgement that the building is safe to occupy. His design to fix the structural issues assumed that the only issues were the ones identified by the third party report, and he has agreed that he should have known that he needed to do his own assessment before he could advise the city that the building is safe. Its extra ironic considering Stu Young's statement when the building re-opened, but its basically the point of the professional reliance model. The City would have also expected him to be signing off that the building is safe, 
“It will probably be the safest building in Langford since they have gone through it with a fine-toothed comb I’m sure.”

 

There's no new info on the actual issues, just the detail that the original complaint identified enough structural issues to decide that the building was unsafe, but specifically stated that there may be others. I do find it interesting that Sorensen Trilogy was hired to do the remediation after the initial oversight being entirely their fault because they weren't qualified to do the work in the first place... Could be that no other company wants to take on this headache.

[spanky123]

^ I also found it amazing that ST was hired to do the remediation. One would think that either the City or property owner would have questioned that.

[Mike K.]

Has there been anything new on this front, since the new info came to light?

[AllJetNoPilot]

Not that I've heard, but there's a panel coming apart near the top after the recent windstorm that I keep forgetting to check if its been patched.

 

https://www.reddit.c...h_brokenfallen/

 

Also a bunch of comments in that reddit thread from people that supposedly have some inside information.

[Mike K.]

Thank you, AllJet!