Has it really been 9 months since I last blogged? Holy moly, time flies! A shit ton of things have happened here.
From my last post in February to May, nothing much. On May 9th, just after 7 p.m., I got a knock on my door and a nervous young lady from the rental agency was at my door. She handed my a letter and said I had to be out of the building by 8 a.m. the next morning, orders from the city. I could hear doors opening up and down the hall as other people were getting served with the same notice to evacuate. It was chaos!
That building has 18 huge steel posts that run from the roof into the ground in the parkade on the ground level. It was built in the early 1960s and not once in those 60+ years had those posts been inspected, because there were no regulations to do so, and because they were encased in plaster (to not be bare steel eyesores). One of the plaster coverings had been found with a big crack and they assumed someone had driven into it, so they hired an engineering firm to come in and check it out to make sure it was not damaged. They removed the plaster (hello, asbestos!) and the exposed post looked okay but they decided to dig down to the concrete footing that it was sitting on to make sure it hadn't been knocked crooked.
Well. Let me tell you, the shit hit the fan when they found the buried section of that post was severely rusted. They then dug around all the other posts and found all of them to have severe to very severe corrosion, and a few of them were starting to buckle, The engineer was legally obligated to inform the city's engineers, who deemed the building unsafe for occupancy due to risk of imminent collapse. So hence the evacuation notices given to every tenant. Trying to clear out 171 suites with only 2 elevators was a nightmare!! Some people managed to rent trucks to move their furniture and get all their stuff out, but I was not able to do that. I got the important stuff. Perishables from the fridge and freezer, my meds, important documents, laptop, original artwork, clothes, the cats' food, meds, beds and one litter box.
My sister was my saviour. Without hesitation, she came over right away and helped me sort and pack up what I could take. We loaded up my car and hers, and she called friends who lived close who had a pickup truck, and they came and took boxes as well. I spend 52 days living with my sister and brother-in-law. The cats were confined to the bedroom I was using because her old decrepit dog (who was the sweetest old girl) was terrified of cats, and my three didn't know about dogs. Well, that's not quite true. Lila had lived with a couple dogs in her younger years but still not a fan. So they bounced off the walls in that one 9x10 room for the whole 52 days, and I didn't get a full night's sleep that entire time, because I have not allowed the cats in my bedroom for years.
I had already given my notice to move before the evacuation happened, as I had found a new apartment, but was not able to move into it until near the end of June, because they were do some renovations after the previous tenant moved out on May 31st. So when I did move in the last weekend of June, it was with borrowed furniture and kitchen things, as we still were not allowed in to the old building. But I had my new place and some things to tide me over.
I was able to get into the old building in early August to start packing up my stuff. The building was still not habitable but they were allowing certain numbers of tenants in at a time to pack and move out, those who didn't want to wait for the building to be repaired. Originally they were giving us only 4 days to pack and then arrange for movers to get everything out. Well, considering I had to do the packing on my own as it was weekdays 9 - 5 only, no evenings, no weekends, that was almost impossible. They did change the time to 11 - 8 and allowed Saturdays after the first week, so I just kept going and packing every day, loading up my car and taking what I could each day. I did arrange for mover for the furniture after 9 days of packing boxes and moving stuff. So on August 14th, I was finally out of that building and could wash my hands of the while debacle. There are still people who want to move back in because they have been there for decades, and all their friends lived there also, so they are living in hotels, waiting for the building repairs to be completed.
I did that entire move with no a/c, in a building that faced south, and the curtains had been open and the windows closed the entire time I was away. It was an oven. Even with the windows open, it was so hot! It was hot outside, with bright sun and daytime temps reaching over 30C. It was humid too, and often felt like close to 40C, so some days I only lasted 4 hours. Not at all healthy!
The company that owns that building had an emergency meeting the day we were out of the building, explaining what had happened. Since that time, they have made absolutely no effort to talk to the tenants except through emails that gave brief updates on the repairs. They have been absolutely mum to the many requests for comments and interviews from the press. Just no repsonse. The only thing they did was refund the balance of May's rent, plus our security deposits. And when those who chose to move out handed their keys in, they gave us each a cheque for $1000. My movers cost me over $900. All the people have been put up in hotels while either trying to find a new place (and it is expensive in most places here for people on a fixed income; a lot of the tenants were seniors on pensions) or waiting to move back in. First the Red Cross was paying for those hotel rooms, plus money for food, then the city took over, and now the provincial government has been footing the bill. Not the owner of the building. Who also owns some hotels in the city. Who didn't offer to house those tenants who needed a hotel because they did not have family or friends to stay with. While the repairs for that building must be massively expensive, that company is a multimillion dollar real estate development and construction company. I honestly hope the province and city somehow recoup at least some of their costs from them.
In that rushed move, I buggered up my right shoulder and have been going to physio for the past 6 weeks. 2 weeks ago, I had a steroid shot in the AC joint (where the collar bone join the shoulder blade) because that was one area that was sore, but that wasn't the main area of pain, as I have discovered, because that shot didn't work. So I am going back to see the sports medicine doc to have another untrasound and probably another steroid injection. I still have boxes piled around because it is hard to unpack things when your should screams at you.
The cats are happy to have room, but were much more happy now that they have their cat trees back. We live right on the ground floor and there are trees right outside the windows, so there are squirrels and birds everywhere. Live kitty entertainment! Much more fascinating than living on the 5th floor, far away from the trees.
What can I say? Life goes on.
