After a devastating flood final week, researchers on the Lehmann Centre on the Douglas Hospital say they’ve been elevating issues for years concerning the decrepit state of the constructing.
“This constructing ought to have been demolished years in the past,” mentioned McGill College Psychiatry professor Sylvain Williams. Williams has labored as a researcher on the Lehmann Centre for about 30 years.
“Sadly, it has not as a result of there have been no different options. We now have been asking for a brand new constructing, a brand new hospital. However nothing has moved ahead,” Williams instructed International Information on Monday.
On Jan. 26, a number of pipes within the Lehmann constructing burst, inflicting widespread flooding and harm. Cellphone video shot throughout the flood reveals ceilings collapsing as water gushes into laboratories.
Researcher Mark Brandon says it took him a decade to construct his laboratory. He says was fully destroyed.
“It’s type of indescribable how a lot we misplaced,” mentioned Brandon, an affiliate professor of psychiatry at McGill College. “It’s not only a monetary worth. A variety of time went into this creatively, build up that lab area, so it’s devastating.”
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Williams estimates about 100 researchers and college students used the Lehmann constructing, working in round 15 laboratories in a construction that dates again to the late 1800s. He says most individuals have been relocated to work in different areas of the Douglas Hospital, however laboratory work has largely stalled.
Williams says many college students and researchers have grant utility deadlines arising that will probably be arduous to satisfy.
“They’re all on a time schedule. They should write papers, they should graduate. So that is all up within the air proper now. We don’t know what is going to occur,” he mentioned.
The analysis institute is taken into account one of many main centres on the planet for Alzheimer’s and psychological well being analysis.
Brandon says the flood will trigger main setbacks.
“If individuals in Montreal and Quebec surprise the place is the analysis being performed to search out higher therapies, it’s right here and it’s within the constructing that was simply destroyed,” Brandon mentioned.
Williams says directors and the native well being company began discussing plans to switch the hospital and analysis centres about 30 years in the past, when he began there. He mentioned that as just lately as 2022, there have been plans to switch the ageing constructions at a price of greater than $1 billion. He says these plans have been finally shelved, leaving researchers to begin from scratch.
Williams says the Lehmann Centre ought to have been demolished years in the past and worries the federal government will proceed patching up structural issues as a substitute of investing in a state-of-the-art facility.
“These occasions have been occurring again and again for the previous 20 years. We now have been warning the administration that we have to do one thing severe about this. Sadly, there have been band-aids on high of band-aids all these years, so it’s a severe setback,” Williams mentioned. “In summer time, the labs are 35 C and 10 C in winter. And you’ve got wild mice operating round. It doesn’t make sense to maintain going on this constructing. We undoubtedly want a brand new constructing and a brand new hospital.”
In an announcement to International Information, Myriam Paquet of the CIUSSS de l’Ouest-de-l’Île-de-Montréal mentioned:
“We’re at present within the strategy of working with the Path des assurances du réseau de la santé et des providers sociaux (DARSSS) to evaluate the extent of the harm. We’re additionally working with the CNESST to make sure the security of the premises for our employees and college students.”
