Birchwood Terrace residents seek answers at town-hall-style meeting with landlord, engineer

Residents of a Portage Avenue apartment complex gathered at a nearby hotel Friday afternoon to hear from building management after their short-notice evacuation Thursday night. 

Emotions ran high at the meeting at Holiday Inn Airport West, where exhausted residents of Birchwood Terrace were in search of answers.

Some cheered as the idea of a class-action lawsuit was tossed out by peers, others wondered what options they had available to them. There were apologies for anger directed to the engineer involved, while others left early out of frustration. 

"It's been hell, really hell," said Theresa Timchuk. "You have to empty your fridge, you have to get to your medication, you have to get your clothes … it's really a bit too much." 

Timchuk, who is disabled and doesn't have many family members in Winnipeg, said she's staying with her niece for now. She doesn't drive a car and said the search for a new place to stay will require "a lot of planning."

"Hopefully I can get my furniture out. I've got so much of it in there but nowhere to store it," she said. 

The City of Winnipeg ordered the evacuation of Birchwood Terrace Thursday night due to serious structural deterioration. The order was made after the city said it was notified of a third-party engineering inspection that discovered damage in various parts of the building's structure. 

Henry Borger is the vice-president of residential properties for Ladco Company Ltd., which owns Lakewood Agencies, the property manager of the apartment complex. Speaking after Friday's meeting with displaced tenants, Borger said in about mid-March, a damaged column in the building's parkade was noticed. 

He said it was initially thought someone may have hit it with their vehicle, but when the plaster was opened in an attempt to repair the damage, a significant amount of corrosion was found.

Work began days later, but Borger said the engineers also asked to check other columns. There wasn't an immediate concern for the one column and it was stabilized, but through investigation with engineers from the firm Crosier Kilgour, more structural issues were found. 

Borger said a letter from the engineer was sent to the City of Winnipeg Tuesday night. 

"We've had insurance look at the building.… This type of inspection is not something you expect. You have to actually dig into the ground to see if the column that is supporting is working, so this was a surprise," he said.

"This has never been part of a routine inspection. We have other parts of the building we do a routine structural inspection, but this was kind of the first." 

Crosier Kilgour president Derek Mizak also spoke at Friday's town-hall-style meeting, which was attended by more than 100 former tenants of the 171-suite building. 

"This all started as an emergency situation and I did discuss this with the [City of Winnipeg] and they agreed that doing the temporary fix was the right thing to do and it didn't require a permit," Mizak said in a response to a question from resident Andrew Manness.

"We were in the process of — in addition to doing the investigation — we were actively producing drawings to remediate all the columns. We just didn't know the amount of work," he said.

"So it was part of the production of the drawings, and moving forward in that direction is when we started uncovering more and more." 

But not everyone was happy with those answers. 

Ken Maines, who lived in the building for six years and left Friday's meeting early out of frustration, said while he's been fortunate enough to find a new place to stay, he knows that's not the case for everyone. 

He also said tenants were given cheques before the meeting to repay their rent and damage deposits. 

"I think they knew about this stress factor a while back, they've been working on that garage for a month and a half," he said. "They would've probably seen something, I'm sure somebody knew there was something wrong there."  

Ladco also owns the hotel where the meeting was held, but Borger said the company won't provide room and board because it's not prepared to respond to a "problem like this" where so many people need homes.

He also said thinks the building can be saved, but doesn't have a timeline as to when people could move back into it. 

Ladco is looking to the City of Winnipeg and insurance companies to find the resources to help people find homes, he said. 

Meanwhile,the Canadian Red Cross said in a statement to CBC News it's supporting residents with emergency lodging and food for those who need it. U-Haul also said it's offering 30 days of free space on new storage rentals, based on availability at its Notre Dame store.

The city said on Friday approximately 250 people lived in Birchwood Terrace.