An act of vandalism has taken a van belonging to Community Links out of commission.

Brenda Hume, Executive Director of Community Links, said police told her this morning (August 14) that over the weekend someone drilled a hole in the van's gas tank and drained it of gasoline, filling a bucket and then letting the rest run onto the ground. Unfortunately, that was not known to the staff at Community Links, who merely thought they were out of gas until they drove to the Shell station on Centre Avenue to fill the empty tank and were greeted by an unpleasant surprise.

Fire crews cleaned up a gas spill from the Community Links van.

"It started leaking and that's when we discovered what had happened," said Hume, "It's very unfortunate. We use our van for outreach and I have no idea how long it's going to be needing to be fixed. So now we're having to go through insurance and police investigation. It's very, very sad."

Hume said response to the spill was very quick.

"The fire department was called right away and reacted immediately in making sure that any gas leaked from the van was cleaned up and then we had to wait for the tow truck to come. And the police responded right away and are telling us that we're not the first ones to be hit in the community."

Last Thursday (August 10), a gas spill from a vehicle in Bayside ran into a nearby water feature. On Friday (August 11), fire crews and police responded to another gas spill from a U-Haul van parked at All Fitts Auto.

Hume said the act of vandalism will seriously hinder their ability to help the community, as the van is often in use.

"We use it very often during the week, so we'll have to do alternate arrangements with staff to use their own vehicles and it's just very inconvenient for hauling things to our outreach programming and we're just scrambling, just trying to find out what alternate arrangements we can make."

 

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RCMP Investigating Three Gasoline Spills

 

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