City pushing for building safety
Posted Mar 14, 2012 2:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The city of Calgary is making sure owners of Western Canadian Place assess the entire building immediately.
Tuesday afternoon, part of the Husky sign plummeted to the street below, smashing into a couple cars. It took until Wednesday morning for crews to get the sign secure and safe.
Kevin Griffiths, manager of City Building Regulations, says his department is asking downtown building owners to look over their structures for loose material, and is also pushing for fines under the provincial Safety Codes Act, to go from $15,000 to $250,000 for a first offence.
In the meantime, he says officials are putting together a by-law that would ensure owners of older buildings do regular maintenance checks.
“Further to that now is a requirement that they have an assessment of those fixtures that are on the buildings that would need to be done by professional engineers. So we will be following up to make sure that they have engaged the right professionals to make sure these things are safe,” said Griffiths.
There is also talk of covering fully constructed buildings under the city’s Early Wind Warning System, which currently only notifies companies with buildings under construction of high wind conditions.
