Oil leak ruins CNCenter ice
http://www.princegeorgecitizen.com/
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Oil leak ruins ice at CN Centre
by MARK NIELSEN and JIM SWANSON Citizen staff
A problem with a new Zamboni has forced the city to re-install the ice at CN Centre.
A playable surface will be back in place by Friday morning, in time for the Prince George Cougars’ regular season opener that night.
As of Tuesday the ice had been completely removed, and the floor de-greased. Crews began putting water back on the floor Tuesday evening.
“I think the city was hoping to limp through this weekend and have it at the same level as the (Sept. 13 exhibition game), but the ice was poor and that wasn’t a standard we were happy with,” said Cougars business manager Brandi Brodsky, whose team faces the Seattle Thunderbirds Friday night.
“It’s about safety, and it’s about putting on a good hockey game. Someone had to make a call and the longer we took to decide to take it out the less time we had to work with it. New ice, chippy ice, is better than what was in here.”
The Cougars weren’t happy with the quality of the ice for their lone exhibition game, held a week ago, and declared it unsafe to skate on late last week. The team asked for the ice to be removed then, but the city didn’t make that call until Monday.
“Last week, at our (Cougars’) exhibition game, the ice was OK, but not great and we knew that in order to get to good ice we were going to have to remove it at some point and start again,” said city arenas manager Diane Rogers. “The question was when would we do that and the Cougars came to us and asked that we do it before the home opener, so last night (Monday) we made the decision to remove the ice and (Tuesday) we cleaned the floor and we’re starting to make ice again. At the absolute latest, the ice will be ready Friday morning.”
The trouble was traced to oil leaking from the rust inhibitor applied to the bottom of the Zamboni and getting lodged in the cracks of the ice. The oil had penetrated to the concrete floor.
Steps taken to stop the problem have included steam cleaning the entire machine and putting new rags onto the back of the Zamboni. Other communities have been experiencing the same problem with that particular model of resurfacer, Rogers said.
Rogers could not say how much the cost to the city will be for re-installing the ice.
The Cougars are now practicing in Kin 1 and there have been minor disruptions of the schedule for other users, according to Rogers.
“It wasn’t a major inconvenience for the other user and they understand,” she said. “They’d rather have good ice for the start of the season.”
The ice Friday won’t have any of that logos that had been painstakingly painted by volunteers a month ago.
Only the bluelines, red lines and faceoff circles will be in place.
Brodsky said advertisers have taken the situation in stride.
“Every single one of them has been so understanding,” said Brodsky, adding the logos are to be re-painted next week.
“They’ll be compensated. The city will certainly do that…. The city is paying the full cost to order the paint in, to hire the people to get the ice put back in. The way it hurts us is that it’s not going to look as nice this weekend,” she said.
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