Victoria fire inspectors will test fire-ravaged wood beams for accelerants, as the shell of a heritage building that once housed the Plaza Hotel and Monty’s Showroom Pub is torn down following a suspicious blaze on Monday.
“The potential of saving the front facade is very low,” said Fraser Work, director of engineering and public works with the City of Victoria, as a cable from a crane was attached to the top part of the Government Street wall.
The cable was tugged and wood, brick, concrete and plaster crashed down on smoking wood beams and debris.
It has been days of imploding walls, crashing water-laden wood beams and collapsing wood floors for the former Plaza Hotel, which once boasted hand-laid tile and hardwood floors and beams.
“There’s a high likelihood we will lose the whole structure on Government Street,” Work said. “There’s nothing holding it up except debris. There’s no confidence in the structural integrity of that building.”
The city had hoped to preserve the heritage facade. No other part of the building was under consideration for saving.
Air quality in the area continued to be poor, Government Street remained closed and three stubborn hot spots continued to burn Wednesday, three days after the fire was detected.
Those buried smouldering areas couldn’t be accessed until even more threatening unsecured structures were taken down.
Bruce said the cause of the fire has yet to be determined, and questions remain about why the blaze in the basement accelerated so quickly and why fire-alarm bells and a sprinkler system that were tested as operable on April 26 did not appear to work.
The fire’s intensity and rapid spread “points to some type of accelerant” as a possible cause, but nothing has been determined, Bruce said. “That fire was either burning undetected a long time or there was rapid fire spread.”
Either scenario raises questions.
Bruce said the major timbers from the basement and other places will be checked with a hydrocarbon tester for accelerants as early as today.
With only debris propping up the Government Street facade, structural and demolition engineers supervised the painstaking process of clawing away the water-logged partial walls and floors to reduce the weight on the walls.
Demolition engineers used the debris pile as a platform for the excavator to climb and pluck at even higher targets.
The removal of the top-heavy 16 feet of the Government Street wall to the roof line was the most worrying to officials. Engineers don’t have sufficient plans for the 1910 building to understand its construction.
“Understanding how that will fall, when we don’t understand the structural integrity of everything touching it, is difficult,” Work said.
There are still concerns about the adjacent heritage building at 1413 Government St. While it escaped being burned down, the building could be damaged if one of the Plaza Hotel’s walls pulls at or detaches from the attached building.
“So we are trying to safeguard the building, we are trying to safeguard the people that are in the machines, and we are trying to safeguard Government Street so we don’t have a bunch of damage to the MEC building and into the right of way,” Work said. “And once we start on the east side, we have to make sure the same safe controls are in place and we don’t have damage to the buildings to the east.”
The city has said it was considering trying to save the heritage facade of the bottom two floors of the Government Street wall once the top is removed. Work admits that is unlikely.
“We will try to save as much of the [Government Street side] of 603 Pandora Ave. as we can because it’s heritage,” Work said. “But at this stage, there is a risk we will have to continue to dismantle or deconstruct the facade on Government.”
