FORT FRANCES — Provincial Police have arrested and charged a 12-year-old with arson after a fire burned down a building at the Fort Frances waste transfer station.
Town officials said the recycle transfer station building burned to the ground on Saturday afternoon.
OPP were then called in on Monday morning and started an investigation. As a result of the investigation, police arrested and charged a minor who will appear in a Fort Frances court in July.
Travis Rob, Fort Frances’ interim chief administrative officer, said the building contained electrical components needed to operate two recycle compactors: a public facing one and a larger commercial compactor that handles the curbside materials.
“The loss of the building and the electrical equipment render both of those compactors inoperable,” he said.
Rob said as a result, the town is pausing both depot and curbside recycle collection, but is working as fast as possible to restore services.
“We've been working to try and quickly source some of the electrical components that we need,” he said. “We actually happen to have another building on that site, which we're looking to retrofit to provide power. We think we have new transformers sourced which would allow us … to get both compactors up and running in the short term.”
Rob said he’s hoping to have both compactors back up and running in a week or two, which would allow the restart of depot collection for recyclables.
“Just to provide some sort of level of service. From there, we'll start looking at what we can do to get the curbside collection piece back up and running,” he said.
He said it may take a couple of months to get curbside recycling collection up and running again.
“We're working as quickly as we can right now to get plans and specifications rolling to reconstruct the building, which is a piece that we need for the curbside collection piece,” he said.
“The foundation doesn't appear to have been damaged during the fire. We do still have to get that inspected and signed off on, but the foundation does look good. So it would just be a matter of how quickly we can engage a contractor get design works done and get something put in place.”
Rob asked the public to stay tuned to the town’s website and social media channels for the latest updates as they become available.
