Brick facade plummets from Scarborough TCHC building
Posted April 4, 2015 1:54 pm.
Last Updated April 4, 2015 11:30 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Thousands of bricks rained down from a Toronto Community Housing high-rise apartment building in Scarborough Saturday afternoon.
Witnesses said there was a loud bang followed by a large dust cloud as the outer facade fell off the side of the building located in the Eglinton Avenue and Markham Road area.
It happened just after 1 p.m.
The falling bricks damaged tree limbs and broke several windows. Police said no one was injured in the incident.
Temporary fencing has been put in place to secure the area. Engineers believed another two storeys worth of veneer could come crashing down at any time.
“The brick veneer has has some water penetration behind it during this very cold winter,” TCH president Greg Spearn explained. “The ice and water freeze thaw situation has popped the bricks.”
Spern said they conducted a building condition assessment within the last two years on the high-rise but the aging buildings are becoming harder to manage.
“Unfortunately our portfolio of 2,200 buildings, half of them are more than 50 years old, this is one of them, and unpredictable things happen as they start to age,” he said.
(Photos courtesy CityNews viewer Cory Cassidy)
The incident comes less than a week after Toronto Mayor John Tory called on the provincial and federal governments to chip in to cover the back-log of repairs needed for TCHC buildings.
More than a third of Toronto Community Housing stock is said to be in poor or critical condition and the repairs are estimated at billions of dollars.
