Friends fear a missing caretaker didn’t escape a blaze that ravaged the former Monty’s strip club and Plaza Hotel on Monday.
“His whole life was in that building — that building was his life, he was there so long,” said Wayne Kalnciems, a former DJ and booking agent for exotic dancers at Monty’s.
For three days, Victoria police officers have tried to make contact with the caretaker, Mike Draeger.
Kalnciems, who met Draeger in 1996, said he was originally the maintenance man for the four-storey building. After the club and 65-room hotel closed in 2013, Draeger became its caretaker.
Draeger, who lived on the third floor, collected old carpentry tools that he kept in a workshop in the hotel’s sprawling basement.
His suite was off Pandora Avenue, overlooking the back alley, Kalnciems said.
“I don’t think he had any family or kids,” he said. “He was nice, but kept to himself. He liked building things and fixing stuff. He had quite a collection of tools.”
Victoria Fire Chief Paul Bruce said firefighters had made it to the third floor to do a sweep on Monday when they received news that the basement was ablaze. The basement’s back door blew out from the intense heat. Firefighters were immediately instructed to get out of the building.
Whether Draeger’s suite was checked is not known. “We’ve done everything possible that we could. We’ve flown our remote piloted aircraft system, our drone, we’ve tried to fly them by the windows with our high-resolution cameras, we’ve taken our ladders and put people on the ladders — prior to the condition it’s in now, when the floors were still there — and looked in every room.”
The basement, where Draeger’s workshop was located, was an inferno and couldn’t be entered. Stored there were numerous mattresses for the hotel, furniture and materials that fuelled the blaze, said fire officials.
Kalnciems and others said they don’t believe a rumour that Draeger had left town for a few days. “I can’t see him going on vacation or anywhere,” Kalnciems said. “I’m sad to say, that’s my inkling.”
Ida Winter, owner of MokSana Yoga and Healing Centre in a stone-front heritage building beside the burnt-out hotel on Pandora Avenue, said she and her husband, Stephen, saw Draeger quite often. “He was quiet and he smoked — he was shy,” she said. “We’d always see him [in the alley] and there was a door here in the basement he went in and out of.”
Stephen Winter said the caretaker appeared to be in his 60s and kept to himself. “I don’t think he’s away,” he said. “I’m concerned he’s down there.”
Units on the third and top floors were often lit up, he said, adding Draeger spent most of his time in the basement working.
Winter said Draeger collected carpentry tools from all over the world, including tools from the Second World War. “He would never leave his workshop — the collection of his working tools,” Winter said. “The guy was an artist. The stuff I saw him build was first-rate.”
Draeger rebuilt and restored items such as a biplane that once hung in Monty’s, Kalnciems said.
He also used the workshop to refurbish and build items for his Airstream travel trailer, which was parked in the alley. Winter said Draeger never lived in the Airstream and wanted to sell it.
Victoria police removed the trailer on Monday.
The idea that Draeger would leave all that behind, or not return for it upon news of the fire, doesn’t make sense, Winter said.
Kalnciems said he’s not aware of Draeger having a cellphone or using social media.
Anyone who knows how to contact Draeger is asked to call police at 250-995-7654.
