Residents of Britannia Beach were rocked by the neighbours early Saturday morning (Jan. 17) as crews at Woodfibre brought down the house with a controlled demolition using explosives.
The blasting took out the boiler and a few other components and is expected to mark an end to the site's clearing process, which has been ongoing since the mill closed in 2006, said Western Forest Products' chief operating officer Duncan Kerr.
"We're ending the more active phase in the demolition so it'll become quieter here over the next several months," he said.
Word of upcoming blasting didn't travel around the Britannia Beach community until about 30 minutes before the first explosion, said Lance McClure of the Galileo Coffee Company. His patrons were ready for action, but others in the community were pretty startled by the sudden explosion.
"You could definitely hear it. It shook the whole area around here and I guess the higher you go up in Britannia the worse it was because it just bounced around down here," he said.
"A lot of people thought there was a major avalanche up the way or something to that effect so some people were kind of freaking."
McClure said the community wondered why Western Forest Products didn't notify them of the demolition. Kerr said the company intentionally didn't make an announcement for security reasons.
"When you start using explosives we didn't want to advertise the fact. We actually had RCMP officers on the site just to make sure we didn't have anybody trying to acquire explosives," he said.
Structures associated with the water treatment plant and a few generic buildings that could be used by potential buyers are still standing, like a warehouse structure and offices. Meanwhile, two-thirds of the valuable equipment had been sold to a Chinese company and the rest to various pulping companies along the coast, said Kerr.
At first, the company ventured to sell Woodfibre as-is but it attracted little interest. Now, Western Forest Products hopes the site, which includes 213 acres with waterfront and a hydroelectric power generation plant, will appeal to a range of industries or perhaps even residential developers, he said.
"This isn't the best real estate market in the world, that's for sure. But it's a unique site, which would appeal to somebody that had a specific purpose in mind," said Kerr. "That makes it more of a challenge to sell, but then again, when you do find a buyer that has an idea for that site it's not like there's a lot of sites like it. If we find the right niche then it could sell quite well."
