This Saturday will mark five years since the MacEwan blaze. It caused $20 Million in damage, and – to this day – is Edmonton’s largest residential fire.
The fire destroyed a 149 unit condominium complex, which was under construction, along with 18 duplexes. The loss was devastating, but the lessons learned from that fire are priceless.
“There’s been such a positive story that has come about because of what happened here,” says Fire Chief Ken Block, walking through the MacEwan neighbourhood.
He was there five years ago, when flames consumed the hundreds of suites under construction.
“It was almost like this neighbourhood behind us had been bombed out,” he recalls.
Block says it was the biggest fire call he’d ever witnessed.
“I’d been through the tornado and major events like that with significant loss of life and property damage, but never from fire.”
It will be an unshakeable memory for residents of the MacEwan neighbourhood as well. Kent Carbert remembers seeing flames from his window, grabbing some clothes, and running to safety.
“It’s all surreal when you’re watching everything go down in flames in front of you,” he says.
“You’re just thinking of everything in the house, all your possessions, all the photos and everything you can’t replace. You just start thinking of all those things… It seemed like it was only a couple minutes, and the fire went just like that. It really stands out to me just how quickly it moved,” Carbert recalls.
“Just looked like a bomb had dropped in the area… It was pretty much total destruction on this block.”
Some people moved to a different part of town, while others decided to rebuild in the same area.
“There was quite a few that as soon as they got rebuilt they sold and moved on somewhere else. So I guess for everybody it’s a little different,” says Carbert.
He decided to stay, and has moved on with his life with his wife and new baby.
“You don’t really even think about it that much anymore. You move on and don’t think back about it,” he shares. “Life goes on.”
Five years later, much has changed, and Chief Block credits the tragedy for a lot of that progress.
“One of the real positives out of this whole thing is how interconnected now different agencies are, even within the city of Edmonton. We truly are operating like one city now,” says Block.
Fire crews also started working more closely with Sustainable Development on building code issues, neighbourhood planning, and construction site safety.
“This was a construction site when that fire originated, and certainly the construction site safety measures, the changes that have been made, there’s been a vast improvement.”
“As far as the code world goes that all happened very, very quickly and again, Macewan Green was really the focal point that started the wheel turning.”
On the day of the fire, provincial ministers toured the site. Together with Fire Services and Building and Fire code officials, the group came up with new fire and building codes just two years later.
“Prior to 2008/2009 and those changes we were experiencing 10-15 major construction site fires a year and in 2011 we didn’t have one. So I mean, there’s the proof right there,” says Block.
Home builders must now add fire resistant material between siding and exterior walls, have smaller windows between homes, and – because the MacEwan fire was arson – there are also new precautions contractors must take.
“They took steps to get builders to close up earlier, to monitor their sites better and store things in a different way that didn’t provide so many opportunities for an arson,” explains Jim Rivait, of the Canadian Home Builders’ Association.
“This happened five years ago, and the good news is that there is still talk going on among fire services, people and builders; looking at innovations to make homes safer,” adds Rivait, “and we’re making progress all the time.”
With files from Erin Chalmers and Fletcher Kent
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