Some residents of an Airdrie building that was the site of a fatal carbon monoxide incident early this month say they are moving out while many others who own their units have been left with a huge repair bill.

On February 4, the residents of a condo building at 700 Willowbrook Road N.W. in Airdrie were told to leave their homes because of a carbon monoxide leak that was found inside the building.

The incident resulted in the death of 12-year-old Trai Schlicter, who lived in the building.

A few days after the fatal incident, the building was evacuated again because of another carbon monoxide leak on a separate floor.

No one was injured in that incident, but some residents say they aren’t going to be taking any more chances.

Skyler Keizer, who has lived at the building with his girlfriend for about a month, says they are moving out.

“It's not worth the risk staying here until they've gone through ever single unit and made sure that everything is up to standard and something like this isn't happening at all and won't happen again.”

Two weeks ago, the City of Airdrie issued a notice to all of the residents of the building, advising them to have their gas heating units, appliances that provide heat and hot water to the apartments, professionally inspected.

Following Trai’s death, the RCMP found that the appliances weren’t venting properly and resulted in carbon monoxide leaking back into the homes.

Keizer says he was given a notice about the issue with his heating unit. It indicated that if the instrument had been opened at the top, the vent may not work properly.

“Basically on the hot water tanks there is a round seal to keep the unit sealed up. Otherwise, it can ice up, which is what happened with the other one I believe. Ice can clog up the system and that causes the CO to build up because it can't escape outside.”

He says he received a carbon monoxide detector from the fire department, but its presence gives him little in the way of solace.

“To me, it's a preventative measure but it's not something that's going to be set in stone. Realistically, by the time it's there, it can be too late.”

He says that he decided to break the lease because he didn’t feel safe being there. Luckily, his landlord was sympathetic.

“Our landlord was really understanding about the whole situation. I pretty much told him that I am not comfortable living here anymore and they were able to let us out of our lease.”

Meanwhile, other residents who own their units say that they aren’t left with many options other than paying the exorbitant cost to replace their gas heating unit.

Jasrobin Dhir has lived at the building with his family for the past four years and says he’s already had his boiler inspected and was told it needed to be shut down.

He hasn’t had any heat or hot water in his home ever since and has been forced to find somewhere else to live with his family in the meantime.

Dhir said he’s been told that the repairs won’t come cheap.

“They say it might cost me around $8,000 to $10,000 and I say, ‘how am I going to pay?’ and he says ‘it’s up to you.’”

Before he bought the unit, he says he had a home inspection done and was told that there were no issues.

“They said it’s in good condition when I buy this apartment, but they don’t know what’s behind the wall, how they fix the pipes and everything.”

To make matters worse, he’s worried now that he will never be able to sell the unit because of issue.

“Who will buy this apartment? It’s not safe to live here and who will buy it now? Everyone knows about this building already and I don’t want to sell it to someone when it isn’t safe.”

All of the residents have until March 12 to have a professional inspection completed on their heating units.