Jacqueline Perlin
Assistant News Editor
Classes were cancelled last Thursday when a fire was detected on campus. The cause has been linked back to a mishap in the current subway construction on campus.
The fire occurred September 15, shortly after 11 p.m., in the basement of the Accolade East Building (ACE), causing the building to shut down from September 16 to 18.
According to York administration, the fire was caused when a cable was cut by the subway contractor (OHL/FCC), and it was categorized as a “subway-related incident”.
The power to the hydro electrical cable was lost—the same cable which feeds the campus—and created a power outage in both ACE and the Ontario Archives Building.
According to Debbie Cole-Gauer of the Toronto-York Spadina Subway Extension (TYSSE) project, these sorts of incidents are uncommon.
“It’s not a normal thing to happen,” says Cole-Gauer, adding there is currently an investigation into the event, which includes questioning the contractors on the job.
She says that once an investigation is conducted, all measures will be taken to ensure the same thing will not occur again.
“This is the first time we’ve had something like this happen on this project,” says Cole-Gauer. “So right now we’re doing our due diligence, looking at at what happened and then […] we’re obviously going to sit down and talk about it.”
York maintains the accident has not impacted the construction schedule—set to be completed late 2015—while noting that there was an effective procedure in place to deal with the accident, which resulted in no injuries.
All cancelled classes are to be rescheduled at a later date.
