With Temperatures dropping to -26 tonight, now is not the time to be without heat.
But that’s exactly what’s happening over at the community Centre. Joy MacKay, Recreation Services Manager for the District of Tumbler Ridge says last night (January 7) at about 9 pm, staff noticed the water was getting a little cool. “They tried to restart the boilers, but with no success,” says McKay. “The boiler contract has been here all day. The control panel for the boiler is fried, but we’re not sure what the cause is. Maybe there was a power surge or something.”
McKay says that parts are being shipped in from Ontario, and should be here by Thursday, and they should have everything up and operational by the weekend.
But in order to keep the building from freezing over the next 30 hours or so, McKay says they will be closing the building tonight, then bringing in some industrial heaters to set up inside the community centre. But they are loud and, more importantly, the building would need to be ventilated if the public were going to be on site, which defeats the purpose of the heaters.
With the temperature expected to start going up on Thursday, McKay is hoping the building can be re-opened Thursday or Friday, but she says they’ll be making that call once they know what the building temperature is looking like.
The Community Centre will stay open for the rest of today, though the pool is closed already. “Some of the rooms are a little chilly,” says McKay, “But we have space heaters set up all over.” She says the offices, for instance, are still 22 degrees. “It’s nice here. But down in the linkway it’s about 17 degrees. We don’t want it to get much cooler than that.”
And, she says, with kids just getting off school, the doors of the community centre will be opening quite frequently, letting off a lot of heat.
Plans are to re-open the community centre at noon on Thursday, January 10
