Repairs from WFCU Centre fire could take a year, cost $1M: Dilkens

It’s expected to take a year to fix the WFCU Centre after a fire last week. CTV Windsor’s Chris Campbell has details.

Repairs to the WFCU Centre after a rooftop fire last week could take up to a year and cost approximately $1 million, according to Windsor’s mayor.

Mayor Drew Dilkens provided the update during a radio interview Tuesday morning on the Mike and Meg show on AM800, one week and a day after a blaze broke out on the facility’s roof during federal election day.

“The insurance company is on site. All of the engineers are on site,” Dilkens said. “And the fire which happened in some of the solar panels, I don’t know if we’ll actually ever figure out the precise cause, but it was related to some solar panel configuration up there.”

Flames tore through the roof above the AM800 community rink, and water used to extinguish the fire seeped into the insulation, affecting two other community rinks, Dilkens said.

“They’re going to have to fix the roof from the inside of the AM800 rink. That’s going to be the starting point. And they’re going to have to remove insulation and repair all of that. It’s going to take quite some time to do those repairs,” he said. “That’s why the AM800 rink is closed at this point in time.”

He added that while the main bowl remains operational with its ice surface intact, staff are working to accommodate increased demand by keeping it in use longer than usual.

“We’re expecting that it’s probably the better part of $1 million worth of damage,” Dilkens said.

“They said plan on this taking about a year... and if it’s not a year, I think, you know, it’s certainly going to impact fall rentals on that particular rink.”

The mayor called the incident a fluke and said a review is underway.

“We’re looking at all of our other solar installations as well, just to make sure everything’s okay with them so we don’t see this type of thing happen again,” he said.

Dilkens said city staff will work diligently over the summer to complete repairs in time for the fall season.

“We know thankfully, it happened now, of all times of the year when fewer people are skating. And so we’re going to work very diligently over the summer, to try and get all of these repairs done so that we’re ready to go for fall and we’ll have more updates as they become available.”