Steve Seebach arrived for work at Nechako Brake & Wheel in downtown Prince George and was walking through the yard to get into the building when it hit him.
It was the smell of gasoline, and it didn’t take long to discover the source.
In one corner of the fenced yard, he saw a truck with a hole drilled in the gas tank and a gas can overflowing with fuel, creating a small river as it drained. He followed the flow to a large inch-deep puddle of gas and got the shock of his life.
“I kept following it, went to another truck and there was a body laying underneath,” said Seebach.
“In one hand is a torch, in the other hand is a drill, and beside him is a gas can with a tank draining. He’s unconscious and he’s laying in a puddle of gasoline. So I kicked him, and when he wouldn’t come around I thought he was dead.”
Seebach phoned 9-1-1 and an ambulance and fire rescue crew arrived. The man was given smelling salts and regained consciousness. A paramedic took him into the ambulance to check on his condition and told him he was taking him to the hospital.
He said, ‘You’re not taking me anywhere, and he turned and walked away,” said Seebach. “Fifteen minutes later the police department showed up and they asked where he went. I told them he walked down the alley and smells really bad of gasoline. The cop was gone for 15 minutes and he comes back and said he couldn’t find him and just told us to clean up the gas and have a nice day.
“I said, ‘He just did $3,000 damage to two trucks and you’re going to let him walk?’ And he said, “There’s nothing we can do about it.’ I said, ‘We should have tied him up like we were going to.’”
That incident happened Sept. 8, and less than two months later the auto repair shop at 681 Second Ave., suffered serious damage when a pair of vagrants apparently lit the building on fire. A surveillance camera showed a man and woman started a small fire against the building, then went to an adjacent yard to get more wood, which led to the fire getting out of control.
“We’ve got it all on video,” said Seebach, the service advisor at Nechako Brake & Wheel. “This man and woman were burning all this wood trying to stay warm, yelling and screaming and fighting with each other, and the fire caught underneath the tin and went up the tin on the outside, up the tin on the inside and caught the building on fire.”
The Oct. 29 fire destroyed the building’s electrical controls, which are still under repair, six weeks after the blaze. The shop was closed for about a week and staff, including Seebach, were temporarily laid off. Until the electrical repairs are finished and an electrical room is built, the shop has to rely on a diesel generator system which burns $450 worth of fuel each day. The fire also damaged two steel roof beams and insulation, which will have to be replaced in the summer months.
Seebach said the people who caused the fire have not been arrested.
“They’ve got pictures of them on video but what are you going to do, take their shopping cart away?” he said. “The exact same thing happened a year ago at the other end of the alley from us at Randy’s Automotive. His business was closed for a month-and-a-half after that.”
Seebach has seen enough evidence of crime, vandalism and vagrancy increasing in the light industrial area east of Queensway to know the problems that plague downtown businesses are not going away.
“It’s getting worse every day,” said Seebach. “That big fire they had at the tent encampment on First Avenue, what a mess. I’ve seen the police and fire and a garbage truck there every day, cleaning that up.
“There’s lots of people in this neighbourhood who know what’s going on. Lots of our customers talk about it when they come in. There’s something happening here all the time. We see people going down the street here with shopping carts full of pallets and stolen stuff and nobody does anything about it. I happens at all hours of the day.”
