The Peace River South school district says removal of Tumbler Ridge Secondary School has started and will continue throughout the summer.
The removal of the school is expected to be completed in the fall, with the school district promising to continue to share updates if timelines change, a post to Facebook Monday (July 21) says.
“Every effort is being made to carry out this work in a way that respects the significance of the site and minimizes disruption to students, families, and the broader community.”
The school district said that to support privacy and reduce impacts, the district is taking several steps.
Most of the work to remove the furniture and other moveable materials will take place inside the building and materials will be removed using covered trucks.
The school will be carefully dismantled in stages, rather than using more “disruptive methods.” The materials will also be transported to regional landfills and the Tumbler Ridge landfill will not be used.
The school was the one of two sites in a mass shooting in the northeastern B.C. community on Feb. 10.
Nine people, including the suspected shooter, died in the shootings: the first at a home in the community and the second at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School. The suspect’s 39-year-old mom and 11-year-old stepbrother were killed at the home, while the victims at the school included five students between the ages of 11 and 13 and a 39-year-old educator.
The suspect died of a self-inflicted injury.
Twenty-seven others were injured in the shooting at the school.
The school district said it knows many people would like an opportunity to recognize the important place Tumbler Ridge Secondary School held in the community. Beginning Monday (July 20), the signs and flags were removed and taken down.
“We share this information in advance so that those who wish to may reflect and remember in their own way.”
In the weeks after the shooting, it was announced that Tumbler Ridge would be getting a new school, built at a new site.
A new location has not yet been announced, but the release from the provincial government said the location and design will be “informed by trauma-informed community consultations and expert advice, with that feedback guiding a plan that will come back to the community for design consultation later this year.”
The provincial and federal governments have pledged a combined $200 million to build new infrastructure for the community, including a new secondary school. Students finished out the school year in a temporary, modular school site.
B.C.’s Attorney General Niki Sharma announced July 7 that the government had retained legal counsel to potentially sue OpenAI in California, where the company is headquartered, and in B.C. OpenAI shut down the suspected shooter’s ChatGPT account after detecting a violation of the company’s usage policy, but the company didn’t alert authorities at the time.
Sharma said any money recovered would go toward supporting recovery efforts in the community.
The school district says in the coming weeks it will be working with the Infrastructure Ministry to begin the process of selecting an architect to develop design concepts for the new school.
The students and staff finished off the school year in portables next to the building, which were installed toward the end of February.
They’re set to move into a modular complex, the Kodiak Campus, for the next school year. The school district said the buildings for the campus will begin arriving on site later in July.