THUNDER BAY – Audrey Jackson says there have always been issues with the elevators in the 11 years she has lived in PR Cook Apartments.
But what happened this past weekend at the St. Joseph’s Care Group senior’s residence was the last straw.
The eight-floor building on Carrie Street was left without elevator service for a number of hours on Saturday after the only elevator in service malfunctioned, leaving residents stranded in their units and Thunder Bay Fire Rescue firefighters called to take those on the ground floor up to their apartments.
The second elevator has been out of commission since the beginning of October due to renovations, a process Jackson said the tenants’ association was told would only take six to eight weeks. It was negatively impacted the mood in the building.
“I think we’ve been patient long enough to wait four months for one elevator and then to be dismissed like it was no big deal, and to be truthful there are some people who are getting very, very irate about the elevator situation,” Jackson said on Tuesday afternoon in her seventh-floor apartment.
“You can’t get on when they’re bringing people down for their meals. There have been a couple of times there have been almost fistfights getting on and off the elevator.”
On Saturday Jackson took the elevator down to the main-floor lounge at 7:30 p.m. to play cards with friends. By 7:40 p.m. the elevator had stopped working.
She said a repair person came to check on the elevator some time later and it was not clear when it would be fixed.
Around 10:30 p.m. a total of nine firefighters from Junot and North Central stations arrived and assisted bringing residents back to their apartments, in some cases carrying them up the stairwells in wheelchairs.
Jackson said she walked halfway up to her apartment before the firefighters convinced her to let them carry her.
A fire department official confirmed firefighters were involved in carrying residents up to their units.
The elevator has since been repaired and was operational Tuesday afternoon.
Jackson said considering the circumstances, things went as well as they could have that night and praised the firefighters for their help.
But she said the situation could have been much worse if it happened at a different time of day and if the firefighters weren’t available.
She raised the issue with building management on Tuesday and wasn’t pleased with the apparent lack of concern.
“I was very surprised. I was shocked, in fact,” Jackson said. “If this had happened at a meal time when there were maybe 40 or 50 people down in the lounge who are all on support and have disabilities of some kind, what would they have done?”
Scott Potts, St. Joseph Care Group's vice-president of infrastructure and planning, confirmed both elevators were down on Saturday night.
Potts said work is completed on the elevator that has been out of service since October and it will be operational once it has been inspected.
