Deck collapse hits close to home for Lower Sackville councillor
Posted Sep 25, 2013 09:34:44 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
This past weekend’s deck collapse in Dartmouth hit very close to home for a Halifax Regional councillor.
District 15 Coun. Steve Craig’s daughter Marlo and her partner Byron Nagle were at a birthday party at the home and on the deck when it collapsed, sending more than a dozen people crashing about four metres to the ground below.
Both were seriously injured and remain in hospital with long recoveries ahead of them.
Marlo was operated on Sunday morning at the QEII Hospital and has four pins and a plate to repair her femur. Internal injuries haven’t been ruled out.
Nagle was operated on Monday night for a broken leg and ankle at Dartmouth General.
Craig tells News 95.7, his focus right now is on his family, but he says he wants answers as to why the collapse happened. He admits emotions are running high.
“Tears were coming to my eyes…sense of anxiety, frustration, anger, not knowing where to go. However, having said all that, at the end of the day I hope nobody else ever goes through this, through no fault of their own. Everybody’s impacted by this and their lives have been changed,” said Craig. “I think it’s important in this case that we do get to the bottom of this, we find out exactly what did happen and I’m waiting anxiously on [city] staff to come up with some of that information. Whatever the appropriate action is, it will be taken.”
Craig said he was at the scene the next day and it appeared to him that the deck was in fact nailed to the house, instead of being bolted.
Halifax Regional Police are investigating the incident to determine if there is evidence of criminal negligence in the construction of the deck.
