(250 News archive photo)

Prince George, B.C. – It will be sometime next week before residents of the Latitude apartments on Westwood Drive learn when they will be able to retrieve some of their possessions from the building.

The 34-unit apartment block incurred heavy fire, smoke and water damage after fire broke out early last Wednesday morning.  Investigators with Prince George Fire/Rescue issued a preliminary finding that the fire was accidental.  They have completed their investigation but are still to submit a final report.

In the meantime, the 60 residents of the building have been staying with friends, relatives or in local hotels and initially received assistance under the City of Prince George Emergency Social Services program.  That program expires after 72 hours and the City had entered into discussions with the province to have its resources kick in rather than renewing the ESS program every 72 hours.

The Red Cross has opened a Resilience Centre at its office at 1399 6th Avenue which is open from 9am to 5pm today and 11 am to 7pm each day this week.  Any tenant of the Latitude building who has not received assistance but would like to can contact the Red Cross office at 250-564-6566, extension 41.  You’re asked to call ahead to make an appointment.

Beck Rowe, Manager for Northern and Aboriginal Engagement for B.C. and Yukon with the Red Cross says the fire victims who come in will speak with a case worker and move through a needs assessment.  She says “the services that are provided to each individual, or to each unit or family, would be different based on that needs assessment and what the different people actually need.  There are three different categories: One is around direct services, the next around referrals to other agencies that would be supporting that person’s needs and the final area where we might provide support is around advocacy.  One of the things that is really important is that the Red Cross doesn’t do a duplication of services provided by the other agencies in town.”

Regarding access to the fire-damaged building, Robin Hayer of Hayer Homes, the building’s owner, says it will be sometime between Monday and Wednesday before a decision on that matter is forthcoming.  He says “the engineer is just going in there to see what obviously has to be that’s structurally  that people can enter the building, and until he gives his report then the restoration company will set up for tenants to go in there.”  He says as of Friday the goal was to have tenants be able to enter between Monday and Wednesday.  “So, there’s 34 tenants it’s going to probably be not just a one-day process, it would be at least a few day process.”

We asked Hayer if the entire 34-unit structure has been damaged to the point of being a write-off.  He says “I’m not certain on what the degree of the damage is, I haven’t been given any assessment on that.”  He also says “I’m pretty certain that the restoration would have to happen before anybody could move in.  As far as timelines and stuff like that we haven’t been given any of the assessment reports and we haven’t been informed of anything as of today.”