Residents of a 30-storey downtown building who have been without power for more than three days should have the lights back on in the next 24 hours, according to Toronto Fire Services.
A burst water pipe caused flooding in the electrical room of 260 Wellesley Street East on Tuesday afternoon, leaving about 1,000 residents without power or water.
Speaking with reporters on Friday afternoon, Toronto Deputy Fire Chief Jim Jessop said that crews will be slowly re-energizing the units within the building.
“We are very happy to announce that heat has been restored to the building,” Jessop said. “So far the building’s system is holding, which is really great news.”
The province’s Electrical Safety Authority (ESA) authorized the power restoration around 10 a.m. on Friday “in a limited function.”
All life-safety systems such as fire alarms, stairwell lights and elevators are now functioning in the building, but residents may need to wait a little longer for power to return to their units.
Firefighters need to conduct a “slow, deliberate and methodical” sweep of every unit within 260 Wellesley Street East before power can be restored, Jessop said.
“If stoves have been left off, if there are materials left on stoves, if curling irons have been left on, the last thing that we want right now is multiple fires breaking out in this apartment building,” he said. “This is not going to happen in the next hour or two. We are probably looking at the next 24 hours that this is going to happen.”
Steve Smith, the General Manager of the ESA, said that the flooding could have been “detrimental” to the building’s electrical system.
“When we saw the water entering the building in the manner of which it was, we shut it down so there was no catastrophic failure,” Smith said.
The ESA also warned that tenants may experience “sporadic outages” but they are confident the system is “safe and ready to function.”
“We may have to bring the system down piece by piece as issues arise so that we can deal with them. So we won’t see full stabilization for probably 48 hours,” Smith said.
Officials are asking tenants to be a little more patient and to avoid plugging in electronics or rushing to take a hot shower until power has been fully restored to the building.
“The last thing we need is another issue that sets us back,” Jessop said. “We are imploring you, we know you need hot showers, we know you are tired, we know you are hungry, we understand that and we commend you for your patience and your tolerance. Please do not start maxing out all of your electrical outlets, your hot water usage, your appliances because you may have the unintended consequence of setting us back in the progress we are making.”
The Wellesley Community Centre will remain open until at least Monday for residents. Jessop said that all resources being provided to residents of 260 Wellesley Street during the power outage will continue to be made available until the building is stabilized.
Ward 13 city councilor Kristyn Wong-Tam said she was thankful there were no casualties or fatalities as a result of the power outage.
She also said that she will be meeting with the mayor and city manager to discuss ways of ensuring that older buildings in the city are properly maintained to prevent further power outages.
“I think it’s important for us to recognize that the city has a stock of aging buildings,” she said. “Because we live in climates that have extreme cold and then all of a sudden it warms up, things do happen and sometimes it is related to that, but I do think that moving forward we have to do a better job and that includes ensuring that property owners are going to be held to account to make sure they are doing their job to keep these buildings in a state of good repair and to make sure they have better communication protocol with the tenants.”
The 33-storey building is managed by the same company responsible for a building on Parliament Street that was the site of an electrical fire in August 2018, which displaced about 1,500 residents.
Those residents have not been allowed to return to their homes and Wong-Tam said that 26 of them were being housed at 260 Wellesley Street.
“There were so scared of reliving the horror of possibly being relocated,” she said. “They were the biggest heroes of all as they held it together.”
A spokesperson for the owner of the building pledged to meet with the city to discuss maintenance and upkeep.
“On behalf of my clients and frankly others in the apartment industry who do manage and own buildings of this vintage, we share the call from the counsellor,” Danny Roth said. “No management company wants to see tenants dislocated.”
Roth thanked residents for their patience and perseverance throughout the ordeal, but warned that the power restoration may still be trying for tenants.
“This is not as simple as turning on a light switch,” he said. “There are going to be some limitations and there are going to be some difficulties ahead, but as we have seen so far, this is a resilient group and we are grateful for that.”
