It was a beautiful sunny Friday afternoon on June 26, 2015, just before 5 p.m.
Canmore was abuzz with activity heading into Canada Day and residents of 13th Street were going about the last moments of life, as they knew it.
The Bow River Seniors Lodge that sits adjacent to the 1970s neighbourhood was in the initial stages for construction of much needed new seniors living units. Just a few days earlier, politicians and officials had gathered on site for an official ground breaking ceremony for the $16 million project.
Alberta Seniors had its general contractor for the project, APM Construction Services Inc., on site with contractors, including Ground Zero Grading Inc.
At some point after 4 p.m., a Ground Zero employee was operating an excavator on site when he hit a gas line, according to department of Jobs, Skills and Labour spokesperson Christine Wronko.
The situation was becoming more and more serious every moment after the gas line was hit, as the explosive gas was slowly seeping through the ground into the basement of 942 13th Street. Once it found an ignition source, the home would be completely destroyed and significantly damage the surrounding neighbourhood.
“The gas line was caught by the bucket of the excavator while preparing a ramp,” Wronko wrote in an email, adding at that stage ATCO Gas was not yet involved.
The Outlook requested an interview with an Occupational Health and Safety investigator, however, Wronko responded to areas of inquiry by email that the investigation is ongoing.
As of yet, investigators have not determined whether all appropriate actions were taken after the gas line was hit to evacuate the area, or call 911. Canmore’s fire department responded after the explosion shook the entire valley and spewed a fiery debris cloud into the air that was a clear indication their services were required. Residents reported a construction worker going door-to-door warning of the gas leak as well, however no efforts to evacuate residents were taken until afterwards.
There is also no new information on any charges being laid in relation to the explosion, or the total value in property damaged as a result.
Michael Fark, Canmore general manager of municipal infrastructure, said because insurance companies are handling the restoration of individual properties, there is no method for the municipality to determine a total value for the damage.
Fark did say, however, a Canmore Fire Rescue investigation into the explosion showed that the gas line was pulled out of the main gas line manifold connection underground in the alleyway.
“Fugitive gases from the mainline manifold travelled underground through the porous soil, possibly following underground utilities,” explained Fark. “Methane entered the house structure through utilities or foundation weaknesses. The migration and accumulation of methane in the home reached a rich explosive range between the Lower Explosive Limit (LEL) and Upper Explosive Limit (UEL). One of numerous, potential ignition sources present within the home (electric or gas appliances, home wiring) ignited the gas and caused a large explosion.”
That was at exactly 4:51:33 p.m. – which is when the closest Natural Resources Canada seismograph station in Priddis, Alta. – approximately 80 kilometres south of Calgary – registered a 1.1 on the Richter scale.
Of the 18 homes that were immediately affected by the gas explosion, all but a couple remain unoccupied.
David Owen, at 962 13th Street, was at home with his wife Annette when the explosion occurred and he was first to reoccupy his home some six weeks later. In his mid 80s and unable to move around without assistance, it has been difficult for Owen in the aftermath of that afternoon.
Owen says people may easily dismiss what happened that day as being over because nobody was seriously injured or killed and the damage caused was considered “insurable” – but that is far from the reality of the situation.
“How much of my anxiety is due to the explosion and how much is due to all the other things going on in my life is hard to separate; it just adds to it,” he said. “It has made a bad situation worse, that is all. How much worse? How do you measure it? I don’t know.”
Owen said his home has lost value because of the explosion, so selling is not an easy fix to his challenging situation as some have suggested. He said he has no idea how to fix the problems he is experiencing as a result of what happened that afternoon.
While each homeowner and family along the street has their own specific set of circumstances and varying degrees of damage, there is still a real sense of loss for those who have had the entire contents of their home carted away to the landfill.
Longtime local Charles Raynolds knows about that first hand. The retired business owner lives at 937 13th St. with his wife and they were preparing to leave town for six months on a trip. Then suddenly, boom, everything changed.
Raynolds says the experience has been frustrating, to say the least, as he sits on the second level of the single family home taken all the way down to its skeleton of two-by-fours.
He has almost nothing from inside his home from before the blast except several pictures, a jewellery box and a few items he was able to grab before restoration work commenced.
He points through the bare bones home, where some windows are still boarded, to where a new wooden walk-in closet was installed and has been scrapped. There would be the sitting room, bedroom and the bathroom with brand new fixtures adorning the shower, which he saw being ripped out by workers with a claw hammer. He hopes at least to be able to keep the Rundle rock fireplace work on the main level from being demolished, the only thing left in the entire home.
Raynolds questions why the contents of his entire home had to be removed and disposed of without his being able to salvage anything at all. He also said work to document through photographs all his belongings is incomplete and he finds himself arguing with his insurance company over it.
Being stuck in a battle over the value of your belongings is disheartening, he said. Raynolds’ policy is with Intact Insurance and, while they were willing to pay for the cleanup effort after the explosion, he says he is now in the process of having to prove the value of his home’s contents that were already removed and scrapped.
“As time has gone on, I am in a position of arguing with my insurance company now,” he said, adding that even with a good policy in place he only receives half the value for his contents once a price is actually agreed upon.
Raynolds’ house was one of a dozen managed by Prostar after the explosion for remediation and recovery. He said at first he was thankful to have professionals assist dealing with an explosion scene, but in the end he has been dissatisfied with the results.
“People were so overwhelmed by what had just happened that to have anyone present with any means of direction was an absolute plus,” he said. “All we had to do was sign a stack of papers and give the disaster chasers a credit card.
“ProStar has cost us many months of our lives and tens of thousands of dollars needlessly in delays. I have requested from our insurance company a complete audit of ProStar’s bills and performance.”
It is not often that a house explodes in a quiet residential neighbourhood one afternoon and local restoration companies are called in to deal with the aftermath.
ProStar Cleaning and Restoration president Jodi Scarlett said the obvious damage to homes on 13th Street was broken glass and debris, but once that is cleaned up there is a bigger picture to be considered.
“The type of incident being an explosion happening is a little bit atypical,” Scarlett said. “It is different than a fire or a flood and it caused quite a bit of damage that was severe, but not necessarily evident to the naked eye.”
What made this explosion even more complex for those doing recovery work was the fact that asbestos was present in not only the home that exploded, but also in some homes shaken so hard by it they came off their foundations.
Scarlett said many properties along the street had asbestos in their ceiling structures.
“If you don’t bother it (asbestos), it won’t bother you, but when it is disturbed it then becomes a concern,” she said. “It is not just the asbestos from the exploded house coming in the windows, it is the shaking that happened to those houses with asbestos in the ceiling.”
She said a fine dusting of asbestos was found to contaminate homes and as a result an entire home’s contents had to be treated as part of the abatement process.
Scarlett said a technical hygienist was brought in to assist with homes contaminated with asbestos and the Alberta Asbestos Abatement Manual issued by the provincial government in 2012 was followed.
She added that before the contents of homes were disposed of, owners signed off on the removal of contaminated material in every single case.
“The correct protocol is to have all homeowners sign off before any items they owned were disposed of,” she said. “I know we went through a protocol with our homeowners about what was there, what we were doing with it and how it would be handled.”
