The owner of the Slumber Lodge damaged by fire Easter Sunday, said he had no insurance and hasn’t decided what he’s going to do about the motel.
“I am now working on how to remove the mess and will decide what to do after that,” John Carhoun said from his home in Vancouver Thursday.
He criticized the city for going ahead and demolishing the two buildings that were destroyed by the fire.
In previous years the fire department responded to several small fires in the vacant motel and had ordered Carhoun to board it up.
After receiving a demolition order from the city last summer, Carhoun said he hoped to renovate it. There are still two buildings standing on the property.
At Tuesday’s city council committee of the whole meeting, Fire Chief Des Webster said the city hopes to amend its fire protection bylaw to deal specifically with fire damaged or vacant buildings.
The city’s three-year-old bylaw presently gives owners 30 days to board up a vacant building or haul away demolished material.
“Insurance companies have asked us to look at 60 days because that’s more reasonable,” Webster said, noting the bylaw needs fine-tuning to make it more viable.
Mayor Walt Cobb said the city had also received complaints of a dead deer on the motel property and he asked the bylaw office to remove it.