The front door of the Greater Vernon Museum and Archives was left shattered after someone threw a rock through it the morning of Sept. 23, 2016.
Image Credit: Gabriel Newman
September 23, 2016 - 11:00 AM
VERNON - It's the second unpleasant surprise staff at the Greater Vernon Museum and Archives have encountered this month alone, but it hasn't kept them from running right on schedule.
“We had school groups coming in at nine,” museum director Tracy Satin says.
The museum received an alert from the security company early Friday morning that someone had broken in through the front door.
It appears an individual was lighting things on fire outside the museum and threw a rock through the glass door of the museum, presumably in an attempt to get some water to put out the fire, Satin says. Unfortunately, he didn’t seem notice the nearby water fountain.
“I guess he didn’t realize,” Satin says.
She says museum staff, the security company, and the RCMP were on it right away and the facility opened on time with no impact to the public. Nothing was stolen from the museum.
“Everybody got the situation cleaned up right away,” Satin says. “It’s unfortunate it happened, but we’re just really lucky, again, that nothing happened to anything in the museum.”
Earlier this month, police and the fire department responded to a suspicious fire behind the museum. The blaze destroyed a porta-potty and some roofing materials.
“I have to say, the community banding together between everyone at the City of Vernon, regional district, police and security company, they’re really making the museum staff, and I hope the patrons, feel quite safe even though there are these little bits of vandalism happening around us,” Satin says.
She says the broken glass is a quick and fairly low-cost fix.
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News from © iNFOnews, 2016