No re-opening date yet for Regina’s only supervised consumption site

There is no date yet for when Regina’s only supervised consumption site will re-open its doors, as staff wait to learn the extent of the damage left behind by a fire.

“We have a lot of unknowns, and that’s a bit unsettling for us,” said Teresa Innis, the executive director of the Newo-Yotina Friendship Centre. “But we’ve pulled together.”

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Wâhkôhtowin Harm Reduction, located inside the friendship centre on 11th Avenue, will be closed until further notice after a fire broke out at a building next door on Monday.

“It’s been a difficult situation to navigate,” Innis said. “It’s been an emotional situation as well.”

Regina Fire & Protective Services said firefighters responded to the blaze around 6:46 p.m. on Monday. The fire began in a building attached to the centre, and no injuries were reported.

The fire department said the blaze was under control at 7:13 p.m. Nobody was hurt. (Regina Fire/X)

Innis said everyone had gone home for the day when the when the fire broke out. The building’s alert system was what notified her about the flames, she said.

When she pulled around the corner and saw the building, Innis said seeing fire trucks and smoke swallowing the centre was overwhelming.

“It it was pretty heartbreaking,” Innis said. “(I’m) getting pretty emotional just thinking about watching and not knowing what was going to happen to our building and to our centre.”

Innis said there is a feeling of uncertainty around the situation, because she hasn’t yet been able to see the damage for herself. The centre shares a wall with the business that caught fire, and Innis said she doesn’t know how the flames may have impacted the building’s structure.

“We’re preparing for their worst, but hoping for the best,” she said. “We really aren’t sure if it’s just going to be smoke and water damage, or if there’s going to be more significant damage.”

Innis said she and her staff are working on ways to keep serving the community in the interim.

The consumption site serves between 30 to 40 clients on a daily basis and the friendship centre also serves about 150 meals every day.

Back in January, the centre — which initially opened in 2021 — was granted an exemption for its supervised consumption site to operate beyond an urgent-needs basis. (Gillian Massie/ 980 CJME)

Innis said the centre’s staff members are working closely with Queen City Wellness Pharmacy to create a plan that will allow staff to check in with clients and provide clean drug tools like pipes and needles. The provincial government chose to stop providing clean needles and pipes to drug users in Saskatchewan in January of 2024, instead moving to a recovery focused model of care.

“We’re passionate about our people and all the services that we provide, and to have something like this happen through no fault of our own, it is quite overwhelming,” Innis said.

980 CJME has reached out to the city’s fire department to inquire about the cause of the fire.

Preparing for an uptick in overdoses

While Saskatoon is in the midst of a serious overdose crisis, Innis said Regina has “fortunately” not seen a similar uptick in overdoses.

On Tuesday, the Saskatoon Fire Department said it has responded to 741 overdose calls since the beginning of the year, with nine suspected overdose deaths in March.

While Regina is not seeing such high numbers, Innis said staff members at the supervised consumption site are making arrangements to help if overdoses should spike.

“We are preparing for it,” she said.

“When we see something like that happening in Saskatoon, it typically does come to Regina within a few weeks.”

Immense stress on the staff at Saskatoon’s only supervised consumption site, Prairie Harm Reduction, has left the site until the end of March.

Two Saskatoon Public Libraries also closed their doors for three weeks due to worsening issues around drug use and violence.