Future of Fredericton apartment building undecided after major fire
CBC
More than a month after fire tore through a four-storey apartment building on Fredericton's north side, it's still not clear whether the building can be salvaged.
Owner Gabriel Elzayat said engineers will be on the site this week to examine the structural integrity of the building to determine "whether we need to tear the building down or we are able to clear and fix what's there."
To allow the engineer to see the "critical areas," Elzayat hired a crew to rip out water-damaged drywall and other building material in order to expose those areas.
He hopes to have an answer in the next two weeks about whether to tear it down or fix it up.
Elzayat said there are challenges to both approaches.
If the structure can be rebuilt, it will take about three months to gut it first. That also means extra costs.
Although it would be cheaper to demolish the building and start from scratch — to avoid the cost of the three-month cleanup — a rebuild couldn't begin until next year, he said, so it would be a lot longer before people are able to move in.
Either way, he said residents won't be living at 100 Clark St. for at least 16 to 18 months.
Last week, the Fredericton fire department said an investigation determined the Sept. 21 fire started on a balcony, although they don't yet know the cause.
Elzayat said they know the specific fourth-floor balcony where it started, but the occupants of that apartment were not home at the time of the fire. Nor, he said, did they have a barbecue, which would have been considered a potential source of ignition.
He said he's been told the fire couldn't have started in a worse place — the top floor.
And even worse than that, it started on a balcony and spread very quickly to the attic.
"Once the fire is in the attic, it's very, very hard to stop. The air flow that goes through the attic is significant, so then the fire just started circulating."
He said the fire spread from the attic to the corners of the building and continued downward. That's why the corners of the building are so badly damaged. The fire even reached the corner apartments on the first floor.
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