Green politics pushing gullible Vancouver councillors to approve incredibly risky large wood buildings

Vancouver was rocked by a number of fires on Aug. 06, 2024, including a raging blaze-up of a six-storey, wood-frame development that was near completion, located at 3477 West 41st Avenue at Collingwood Street. While the cause of the fire is not known at this time, the extraordinary damage can surely be attributed to the fact that this is a mass-timber construction project.

Ironically, on June 11, 2024, Vancouver city council had voted to approve the construction of ‘encapsulated mass timber’ construction of buildings up to 18 storeys.

Mass timber products are made by taking smaller wood elements such as dimension lumber, veneers, or strands and connecting them with adhesives, dowels, nails, or screws to create larger structural building components.

At the June meeting, concerns were expressed about the fire-resistance of mass timber. The city’s building official Saul Schwebs noted that fire safety in mass timber buildings was based on testing and modelling, not an actual fire in a mass timber building. He said he wasn’t aware of any mass timber buildings that have caught fire.

Well. Now we know. It’s a disaster. The fire on 41st and Collingwood Street in Vancouver encompassed 8 other houses, resulted in a gas explosion, and brought down power and transit lines. It was very difficult to put the fire out. The sky was black with a column of flames and smoke.

Vancouver council’s June approval of taller mass-timber buildings appears to have been in response to “The Mass Timber Roadmap” report, released in June of 2024 and promoted by The Transition Accelerator.

Much cheerleading accompanied the report with the usual claims of regional economic development, jobs, housing shortfall solutions, and a chance to ‘seize’ the opportunity and be a climate leader through combined industry-government action. To scale up. And BTW, fund this!

Multi-storey wooden buildings? Why? What is this about, you may ask? Well. Climate action, of course.

Everyone knows how much climate activists love trees. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau probably won big in his 2019 election by meeting with Greta Thunberg and promising to plant 2 billion trees to appease the Green Goblin’s demand for #ClimateAction. Nothing has really come of that promise, other than your taxpayer pockets having been skimmed again. CBC’s “The House” did a scathing review of the lack of progress and implausibility of the 2 billion trees.

So, now on the other side of the climate action spectrum, climate activists are keen to cut down trees and engineer them into ‘mass timber’ in a bid to make low-carbon housing and tall multistorey towers. The ‘low-carbon’ thinking is that mass timber will serve as a whole or partial replacement for concrete pillars and steel girders. And you can recycle it later!

The making of the cement component of concrete and of steel are high carbon dioxide intensity industries. In major construction projects, both are the miracle materials that have allowed us to build tall structures that last for decades. But cement is not recyclable.

Climate activists see engineered trees — mass timber — as the alternative.

Seems the plan was working. Kalesnikoff has just secured land and a multi-million-dollar grant in Castlegar.

People should read Parker Gallant’s many writings about the curious Canada Revenue Agency charity, Transition Accelerator, which has never had a receipted charitable donation in its five years of financials posted to the CRA, but receives handsome grants from various government ministries.

Seems to just be a greenwashing climate marketing proxy, something that is supposedly now verboten under Bill C-59.

There is a lack of long-term testing with mass timber buildings. Perhaps the best-known mass timber building is the Olympic Skating rink in Richmond. It is meeting with significant challenges in dealing with the humidity and the life-expectancy of the structure has been downgraded and maintenance costs increasing.

Other tall timber structures referenced in this Vancouver is Awesome story were approved in B.C. but only because of substantial arm-twisting concerning building codes and exemptions.

As is common these days, The Mass Timber Roadmap report pushes race-based construction materials and design. Where once the indigenous mantra was Land Guardians and no-one-touches-our-trees, the examples of mass timber structures in the report are indigenous boutique designer art pieces. And these are dead trees turned into engineered lumber thanks to Big Oil byproducts.

While there’s undoubtedly a place for mass-timber construction, it is not a Net Zero silver bullet. Now we know, mass timber buildings may result in dangerous downtown urban ‘wildfires.’

Demanding a change to reduce insurance rates and loosen fire codes, as the report does, to address the combustion challenge of mass timber is not the way to address the now evident fire risk. Aside from the risk to human life and the property damage, I wonder what were the carbon emissions of the urban mass timber wildfire?

Worth it, Vancouver?
https://www.westernstandard.news/opinion/stirling-urban-firestorm-risk-with-mass-timber-low-carbon-delusions/57181