Electra residents will be allowed back this afternoon
Posted September 23, 2010 2:20 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – People forced from their homes by a chemical incident at the Electra building in downtown Vancouver should be able to return to their units after three o’clock this afternoon. City staff will have to go suite by suite to check for contamination before letting people back in.
It’s expected street closures around the Electra building are going to be lifted by afternoon rush hour as well.
Tracey Snelgrove who lives on the 14th floor of the building says she’ll be able to sleep in her own bed again. Snelgrove says she was lucky because she stayed with her mother who also lives nearby.
It was not the same experience though for Daniel Nguyn. “I moved to at least three different hotels. Last night they told us we had to leave the other one.”
Meanwhile, more light has been shed on what caused the incident. Engineers have used an underground camera to determine foam entered a large empty space below the walkway of the building before combusting. Two chemicals combined to make the foam that was being sprayed.
Will Johnston with the City of Vancouver says when that mixture leaked into the underground space, where it was not supposed to go, there was a problem. “It caused a reaction that causes the foam to expand, through that chemical reaction heat is given off. And because of the volume of the foam that was going in there, there was enough to actually cause it to turn combustible.”
BC Hydro occupied the building until 1991. It says only office supplies were ever stored underground and not in the dirt space under the walkway in question.
