Assessment teams work 24/7 in assessing damage to buildings

Walking though the bowels of the Trimac House, a building along 5th Avenue southwest, it’s hard to get a real grasp of how much damage there is inside this downtown Calgary high-rise until you see the water firsthand.

City inspection teams have been working around the clock since Saturday, surveying property looking at structural integrity and determining whether services like gas and electricity had been compromised.

They’re grading property on a three-colour system, green means it hasn’t been affected by the flood, yellow means that it was at one point affected by the water and red means that there is water still inside the building.

Officials invited media along for one of their assessment tours early Sunday morning.

Footsteps echoed from the group of twelve as it made its way through the lobby to a set of stairs to the seven storey parkade below.

Inspectors began to notice water on the second floor of the garage, they turned the corner to head to P3 and found two feet of water on that level alone, everything else underneath is submerged.

It’s not all bad news though for the owners of the Trimac, water didn’t reach their electrical room located on P2.

“The good news on this building is that the switch here, the electrical gear within the building was outside of the water which is a good story and also there was no contamination with regards to the main services for the water,” says Chief Building Official for the City of Calgary Kevin Griffiths.

“We’ll be monitoring this one to make sure that the water is taken care of. Once the water has dissipated and removed from the building we want to make sure that there are no structural compromises,” he explains. “Building owners in buildings of this nature are required to maintain and look after these things, we’ll be following up with them.”

Griffiths says the building’s owner has taken steps to begin pumping the water out of the garage.

He tells reporters, twenty teams of two have been working, moving from green zones to red in hopes of getting people repatriated to their homes and businesses as fast as possible.

But the building official says it’s important to remember this will all take several days.

In red zones, where homes have been affected by flood levels, it’s possible inspectors may have to go through each and every property to make sure it’s safe before people can return.

Mayor Nenshi again reiterated Saturday night that businesses in the core will not be able to return until at least mid-next week due to a lack of power throughout the core.

Top Stories

Top Stories

Most Watched Today