The cost to restore UNBC’s Wood Innovation Research Lab in Prince George will be roughly a million dollars. That’s according to Director of Facilities Management and Capital Planning Dr. David Claus as the facility has remained closed since the downtown explosion that occurred in late August. Claus explained how the building was able to withstand such a boom stating the damage could have been much worse. “The way that structure is put together it has a wood mass timber actual structure and then the walls are made up of panels and they are attached to that structure. The mass timber structure wasn’t impacted by the fire or the explosion, it flexed and came back just as it was designed to do but some of the panels had been affected by the fire. They were all burnt.” …While nobody wants to see a high-performance building involved in a fire, it was a chance for everyone involved to see how the research lab responded.