A three-storey building in the Ville Marie borough has been cordoned off by Montreal firefighters after they received a call saying one of the walls could be in danger of falling.

They got a call around 9:20 Wednesday morning from a citizen saying bricks were falling from an external chimney of the building at 1029 Saint-Laurent Boulevard, said Aime Charette, a division chief with the Montreal fire department.

The building houses stores on the ground floor, with apartments on the top two floors. All residents were ordered to leave the building as a precaution.

Once firefighters arrived on the scene, they saw no evidence of bricks on the ground, but they did note the masonry fa�ade of the building looked to be detaching itself.

Charette said it could have been that the fa�ade was attached to the wooden structure by metallic fasteners, and water may have corroded the fasteners.

"This is like a routine call for us. It happens once in a while," he said.

St. Laurent was blocked off between De la Gauchetiere and Viger, but was mostly reopened after a city engineer reevaluated the parameter.

The sidewalk and the street parking in front of the building are still blocked off.

The residents have been allowed back into the building.

The fire department has now handed over the case to the Ville Marie borough.

Meanwhile it appears a glass panel fell off a building at St. Antoine and Mansfield early Tuesday morning.

Nobody was injured by that structural failure.

Last week a 33-year-old woman was killed, and her husband was injured, when a concrete slab fell off the Marriott Hotel and smashed through a restaurant's glass ceiling.

Lea Guilbeault was laid to rest on Tuesday.

Provincial building inspectors say the Marriott was last inspected in 2000, and hasn't been looked at since.

According to provincial law, building facades only need to be inspected when the board receives a complaint.

Structural failures an old problem

The dangers of Montreal's buildings are nothing new.

In November 2008, a parking garage in St. Laurent collapsed, killing one man who was trapped inside his car.

Mahmat Salem Khazali died when the Deguire street garage caved-in.

That sparked a flurry of complaints to the Regie du Batiment, which inspected dozens of garages, and ordered five closed until they were repaired.

In March 2008, the roof of the Gourmet Village in Morin Heights collapsed under heavy snow, killing three women who were trapped inside.

That same winter a mall in Pincourt were closed because of snow accumulation.

One building in Montreal has freqently had parts fall off.

Since its construction in 2005, more than a dozen glass panels have fallen off Montreal's Bibliotheque Nationale, the most recent being in September 2008.

Officials say the panels usually break because of a change in temperature.

The Library said it would be too expensive to replace all the panels, so instead a security barrier was erected around the building to prevent pedestrians from walking in the danger zone.

No political will

Despite the litany of structural failures, the city of Montreal does not see any need to change how buildings are inspected.

Earlier this week Claude Dauphin, President of Montreal's Executive Committee, said "I'm not against new bylaws but unfortunately sometimes it takes a catastrophe like that to react."

Dauphin said that for now, the city will continue to depend on the Regie to inspect buildings.

However despite the number collapses, the Regie du Batiment says building inspections are solely the responsibility of building owners, and it will continue its practice of only launching inspections when it receives complaints. 

Jean-Francois Saulnier of the Ville Marie Borough said the borough's recommendations will be made public Thursday.

The borough will issue a document hightlighting what it expects from building owners in order to assure that the fa�ade of the building is secure.