Vancouver City Councillor
Emergency Operations team (led by City Manager, Deputy City Manager and our Fire Chief) powers to react more swiftly to issues as we need to keep our city safe: ie shutting down unsafe situations, thwarting hoarding and price gouging, procuring emergency supplies and even temporary expropriations.
The City is preparing to declare a State of Local Emergency.
While that sounds scary, it’s no reason to panic. SOLE is a legal tool that allows us to shut down risky establishments, mitigate price gouging & hoarding, and keep our City COVID-safe.
Word that the developers of the Brixton Flats project in Chinatown are refusing to fairly compensate residents of the half dozen homes they destroyed back in in April, when a wind storm collapsed a brick retaining wall they had been constructing (ironically covering over the very mural they have featured in their promo for the new development).
As I post this, authorities are still determining the loss of life from the smouldering remnants of the 24-story Grenfell Tower in West London. Videos and images of the early morning towering inferno leave little doubt that the final tally of casualties and loss of life will be grim. Gut-wrenching stories of trapped residents, parents desperately trying to save their babies by dropping them from upper floors to rescuers below. This, the stuff of absolute nightmares.
It’s too soon to guess the cause of the fire at Grenfell, but what we do know is that the residents of the building had been complaining for years about the appalling state of disrepair and dereliction of duty toward safety. Ultimately though, the cause of this tragedy is privatization of public housing.
CN just informed that as of yesterday, they’ve increased traffic on the (Raymur) Burred Inlet Line from zero to six scheduled trains a day.
This means disruption of at grade crossings, more transportation of dangerous good through our community, and a lot more noise…