Snow loads on town-owned buildings are within acceptable levels following checks conducted by town staff.
Snow loads on town-owned buildings are within acceptable levels following checks conducted by town staff.
Kelly Giesbecht, the town’s manager of parks and facilities, started inspecting snow loads on the roofs of town-owned buildings about a month ago and finished his inspections about a week-and-a-half ago. He went on the roofs with an engineer and measured the amount of snow and then compared it to the ratings of the blueprints.
"At this time, from our analysis of going up on the roofs, we have no concern on any of our buildings. But we’ve gone up on our roofs and a lot of the roofs don’t have a lot of snow on them," he said.
Unlike the arena that collapsed in Sylvan Lake, which had wooden support beams, Giesbrecht said most of the Town of Olds’ buildings have metal support beams.
"I think in years that we have exceptional snow (amounts), yes, we’ll be looking at it more closely. I wouldn’t say every year though because those buildings were built to withstand Alberta snowfalls," he said.
Lorne Thompson, the town’s fire chief, said any building owner whose roof suffers damage due to snow loads, must report that to the provincial ministry of municipal affairs.
"It’s not that you’re in trouble. They want to see if they can predict why the failure happened and if it’s a design flaw. If there’s a problem, maybe they can change it. It just makes the (building) codes better. They can submit (the information) for the next building code change," he said.
Heather Kaszuba, a spokeswoman for Alberta Municipal Affairs, said building owners must contact the chief building administrator for the provincial government and that information is used for future reference when the government decides to update the building code. The ministry also ensures that when repairs are made on a building after a collapse that the renovations adhere to the latest building code. Kaszuba said no statistics exist for the number of roof collapses that have happened this winter because the ministry doesn’t collate all the individual reports staff receive.
Giesbrecht will be compiling a report suggesting an inspection schedule for monitoring snow loads on municipally owned buildings and submitting it to town council.
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