St. Catharines fire chief says building next door is also in trouble
An update to St. Catharines city council on the weekend fire that destroyed the former Standard building.
Fire Chief Dave Upper says they've met with the building owners, and engineers, who've determined the building must come down.
However, there's a domino effect, in that the building next door, the La Scala building, is in trouble. "The northern wall on the La Scala building has collapsed on its' own, unrelated to the fire, and it's leaning onto the Standard building. So, of course, once we pull the wall of the Standard building down, that wall at 9 Queen Street, is going to collapse as well."
Sections of Queen Street will stay closed for the time being.
The fire department also dealt with a fire at a homeless camp.
The chief told council they were called to as site under the Westchester Bridge, which wasn't the first time. "The crew arrived on scene, to a significant fire there, which they put out. There were no unhoused people on scene, thankfully there were no injuries, but also no one able to help us figure out what happened."
Mayor Mat Siscoe says the Ontario government owns the bridge, the Niagara region owns the land around it.
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