Toronto building collapse sends seven to hospital: Site was set to be demolished for new transit station
Toronto building collapse sends seven to hospital: Site was set to be demolished for new transit station
By Aileen Donnelly and Alexander Quon, National Post, April 18, 2016
Seven people, including a mother and her baby, were taken to hospital after scaffolding and the facade of a building collapsed at the future site of a Toronto transit station on Monday.
Police got a call shortly before 2 p.m. about the “hazard,” at 876 Eglinton Ave West, Const. Jenifferjit Sidhu said. The front of the building that once housed the House of Chan restaurant, and was slated for demolition, had collapsed.
“It’s a two-storey building,” she said. “The debris has fallen on multiple people.”
Dave Dardengo was driving along Eglinton Avenue when he saw the building come “tumbling down.”
“I heard people screaming,” he said.
Dardengo stopped his vehicle and rushed to help other witnesses search the debris. Police dispatched a K9 search and rescue unit to the area.
Three people were pulled from under the rubble, officials said. Another four people were injured by falling debris. None of the injuries are life threatening. Two workers who were prepping the former House of Chan restaurant for demolition were among the people sent to hospital, as well as a mother and her child. The baby was likely protected from the debris because it was in a stroller, a fire division commander on the scene told the Post.
Iman Guindi works about 50 feet away from the collapse, at the Eglinton Bathurst pharmacy. She didn’t hear the facade of the building come crashing down, but she did hear the sirens.
“I looked outside and saw the mom, baby and dad were all crying,” she said. “Then I heard the dad’s hand was hurt. They were taken to the hospital but they looked okay.”
Eglinton-Lawrence MPP Mike Colle and city councillor Joe Mihevc visited the scene Monday afternoon.
“Today’s accident is concerning,” Mihevc said.
The Greater Toronto Transportation Authority, Metrolinx, is currently building a 19-kilometre light rail transit line along Eglinton. And Mihevc revealed that the building that collapsed is supposed to become “the west end of the Forest Hill station.”
Crosslinx Transit Solutions is handling the construction. Ron Aikin, the site director, would not comment on whether or not he believed human error played a role in the collapse.
“Obviously there was an accident, the ministry of labour is on site, there is an investigation going on right now and I’d rather not speculate on what has happened,” he said.
Police cordoned off Eglinton Avenue between Peveril Hill North and Old Forest Hill Road, and traffic and TTC vehicles were rerouted around the area.
Police said they will reopen the eastbound lane of Eglinton Avenue as soon as possible, but as of press time, the westbound lane was still covered with debris.
To see multiple photos of the site and the rescue operation click this link and scroll to the end of the article:
http://news.nationalpost.com/toronto/building-collapses-at-bathurst-and-eglinton-in-toronto
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WOW!!! Now THIS was close to home. In my first year living in Toronto to start Law School I lived only about a block away from this incident. No matter where I moved to in Toronto for the almost half a century I lived there I had many occasions of eating in that Chinese restaurant being demolished, House of Chan, and right up to leaving Toronto I would go there at least a couple times a month for take-out. The food was great, and there you could get a small cup of really hot Chinese mustard, not the crap they put in those little packets. None of the fortune cookies I got predicted this, however.
Anyway, this is the first news story I've seen in many years that was about something for such a big part of my life I was so close.