A House of Cards: How renovation collapse could have been adverted

The recent collapse last week of a house under extensive re-construction in east Toronto was a close call for the workers on the site, not to mention next door neighbor and CARAHS member Ross Simmons.

Original story in Canadian Contractor:
NOT AGAIN! Toronto house collapses while under construction

Ross is no stranger to job sites. He runs a renovation business My Go2Guy Handyman Services  with his son Eric, and another called Watchful Eye Property Management.

Throughout 2015, Ross has been voicing his concerns regularly to me and others regarding what’s going on around his East Toronto Beaches neighborhood with respect to the lack of site safety. He’s observed plenty of problems on a number of  work sites. Yet no matter how much noise Ross has made about it, no one in power seems to be listening. Until now.

Sure, the Ministry of Labour (MOL) will investigate this near miss and maybe slap someone’s hand as much as possible under current laws. (In fact, we don’t actually know what happened on this site and what caused the collapse.) However, the question is:  Will the MOL go further, maybe take a few extra steps, and send inspectors around to look at other construction work sites to prevent potential problems?

Believe me, the problems are there; and if Ross can spot them, the MOL inspectors and City officials can too. They just need to go look.

Could this incident have been adverted by more rigorous inspection? I say ‘Yes!’; with periodic visits from building departments officials and MOL inspectors. Luckily no one was hurt the day this house of cards collapsed.  As Ross said “Luckily, we had put our dog in the house about an hour before, or he’d have been crushed.”

If only dogs could talk!

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