As reported on CISNfm.com, Fort Saskatchewan officials evacuated a four-storey condo building Friday after engineers determined it was “structurally unsafe.”

The evacuation order was issued at 8 a.m.

The residential condo complex — located at 9930100 Ave. — has 44 suites. It was built in 2003.

“They called their building/condo association who, upon further inspection, decided to contact a structural engineer. The engineer did a preliminary examination, thought there was a number of floor joists that had been damaged or had been improperly constructed.

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“On further examination — and this took the better part of a week — Thursday night at around 6 p.m., they determined there was far more floor joists compromised than initially thought,” Ward explained. “At that point, the structural engineer concurred with the building safety code officer and recommended that the building be evacuated.”

The city was made aware of residents’ concerns last Friday, the mayor said.

“Initially we believed repairs could be made while the residents were in the building, but under further investigation it was determined that the structure wasn’t safe,” Mayor Gale Katchur said. “Based on that, we contacted our emergency operations team… They came in and said it was time to evacuate the building.”

The floor joists are designed to carry the weight of floors above, Ward explained.

“With some of those critical pieces being compromised, there was a risk that some of those might have failed. It’s unknown what the full extent of that might have been — whether it might have been just a localized failure or whether it might have been something more serious — and given the number of floor joists, it was thought that it was a life safety consideration.”

The builder was not identified Friday.

Keep reading and watch the news video on CISNfm.com