Montreal man cheats death in house collapse

MONTREAL – Police are saying a man is lucky to be alive Sunday after a house collapsed on him in Montreal.

The man was renovating the one-storey house with its owner and another worker on Sunday when a basement wall gave way, causing the entire building to crumble around 1:45 p.m.

The two others felt the house begin to shake and escaped before the collapse.

Firefighters pulled the man from the rubble about an hour later. He suffered a laceration to his head and a possible broken shoulder. The man had also complained of back pain, Montreal fire department spokesman Denis Deschamps said.

The building’s owner, who wished to remain anonymous, said he was using licensed contractors, but one neighbourhood business owner said he thought the building’s foundation looked poorly supported.

"I was walking by the house when I noticed there were only about four jacks supporting it," Mohand Yahiaoui said. "That seemed odd because the earth in the foundation was very sandy, very soft and you have to take extra precautions when working on that kind of surface."

Quebec’s workplace safety board is investigating the accident.

This is the latest incident sending fire crews to a residential building in Montreal in response to reports of structural instability in recent weeks.

In late June a man in his 50s was taken to hospital and several others were forced out of their homes after a building partially collapsed in Montreal North.

Days earlier police closed off a section of Papineau Avenue after the facade of a building started to detach. When inspection teams arrived at the scene, they noticed that the building across the street – which houses a bingo hall – was also showing signs of instability. No one was injured in that incident.