Questions raised about abandoned Inuvik row houses after 9 fires in 5 years
Town has discussed purchasing and tearing down the empty houses, but would face costly remediation
The Town of Inuvik is under increasing pressure to do something about two major eyesores that are proving a magnet for arson.
Inuvik's Director of Protective Services, Jim Sawkins, said fires at the buildings on Inuit Road and Kugmallit Road have become an ongoing concern.
Sawkins said there have been nine fires at the row houses over the last five years. There were four fires in 2013, four in 2014 and the most recent was a couple weeks ago at the end of April.
All of the fires, Sawkins said, appear to be the result of arson, despite the buildings being secured and boarded up "to prevent what's happening now, which is fires on a regular basis."
"Most of the fires have been caused by children, curiosity, [or] trying to stay warm," he said.
A seven unit townhouse and a four unit row house on Inuit Road have been vacant since 2011, while two eight unit row houses on Kugmallit Road were shut down by the Fire Marshal in 2012. The buildings are without electrical services.
The houses are monitored by the Town of Inuvik, but are owned by a company connected to Talal Khatib, an Inuvik resident facing drug trafficking and bootlegging charges.
Tearing down the buildings is complicated
The repeated fires have leading Inuvik residents and council members to ask: why can't the town can't simply tear the buildings down?
The question was brought up at an Inuvik town council meeting earlier this week. According to Grant Hood, Inuvik's senior administrative office, the town would first have to purchase the buildings through its annual tax sale, where they have been listed for years. Hood says there are more than $750,000 in back taxes owed on the properties.
However, the buildings contain lead paint and asbestos, so even if the town were to buy the buildings, they would face a costly environmental remediation process before being given the go-ahead to tear them down.
"The estimate we got was a million dollars to do that [the remediation], and at this point in time we just don't have a million dollars," Hood said.
"So that's why we haven't proceeded on tearing them down nor looked at trying to purchase them through the tax sale."
The town could also attempt to sidestep the remediation process by obtaining an order from the Workers' Safety and Compensation Commission prohibiting anyone from entering the building to work. This would move the town past the requirement for expensive remediation, but would take at least a year to get.
For now, though, without ownership of the buildings, the town will simply continue to monitor the situation.
"We will continue to patrol, and we'll continue to put the fires out," said Sawkins.