Current ads
Jobs
Tenders
Notices
General

Click below

CamBay vandals destroy help line

“Where’s the parental responsibility here?”

JANE GEORGE

When a battered woman needs help in Cambridge Bay, she can no longer go to the emergency phone at the Kitikmeot Health Centre to call for assistance in the middle of the night.

That’s because sometime in the early hours of Oct. 10, vandals ripped out the phone from the centre’s foyer between the outer doors and the locked inside entrance.

This was the 10th instance of vandalism at the $20 million health facility, which opened about a year ago.

But this time, the damage was the most severe, said director Mike Burdett, who said most of the past vandalism was minor, mainly consisting of nicks and scrapes to the walls from kids treating the space as an indoor playground.

Over the past couple of months, however, the level of damage had been escalating.

This time, the kids – four of whom were caught by surveillance cameras – hung on to girders holding up the ceiling tiles and knocking many of them down, in addition to tearing out the telephone.

Burdett said the health centre wanted to leave the door open so that public could use the telephone.

“It’s a way of contacting the nurse on call, because not everyone has a phone in their own home, so people can come in to reach the nurse on call, and women in abusive situations could use this as a place to call the shelter,” he said.

“Now it’s locked, I’m afraid.”

The vandalism occurred between 2 and 3 a.m.

“You would think kids would be in bed. To me, it’s very sad that people aren’t respected,” Burdett said. “Where’s the parental responsibility here? Why aren’t they in bed?”

Police say the Royal Bank was also damaged that same night.

Surveillance records of the vandalism offered RCMP a good idea of the identity of the under-aged culprits in both instances.

Youth vandalism is not a new problem in Cambridge Bay. In August, 1998, teenagers started a fire under Kiilinik High School in the summer of 1998, destroying the building.

Just last April, the town’s 53-year-old Roman Catholic Church was destroyed in a fire caused by arson. The incident is still under investigation, but police have already identified some young suspects.

“I would say there is a problem with vandalism in Cambridge Bay, as there is in all communities in Nunavut,” said Sgt. Louis Jenvenne of the Cambridge Bay detachment.

The destruction of the emergency phone is a great loss to the community, Jenvenne said: “If somebody’s hurt, or they need a nurse or a social worker in an emergency, and they go there, they can’t do that anymore. It’s probably a wake-up call for all of us.”

TOP

Advertising
Specs, rates,
& maps
Multi-paper
buying services
About the market
E-mail ad dept

More Information