VANCOUVER — Dozens of residents have been forced out of their homes after an out-of-control fire destroyed an apartment building under construction in Vancouver’s Dunbar neighbourhood on Tuesday and then spread to several nearby homes, totally engulfing one of them.
Emergency crews were called to 3477 West 41st Avenue at Collingwood Street at around 6:30 p.m. as fire consumed a six-storey, wood-frame development that was near completion.
The blaze was so intense it caused a construction crane to crash down across West 41st Avenue, taking out trolley lines and power lines and leading to power outages south of the road.
It was an “incredibly dangerous situation,” said Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim who was at the site of the fire on Tuesday.
“There were embers flying in the sky, landing blocks away,” said Sim, speaking at an unrelated event in Vancouver on Wednesday. “Not only did our firefighters have to deal with… flames shooting up six storeys, they also had to deal with nine other fires that resulted from the embers going up in the sky.”
Following the crane collapse, Sim said he heard explosions go off.
“If you look across the street on 41st, the heat was so intense it literally melted the siding off.”
Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services deputy chief Robert Weeks said when firefighters arrived on scene, there was a significant amount of flaming embers impacting neighbouring houses.
“A fire like that creates its own wind. When a fire is as big as it was, all that wood is fuel for the fire,” he said.
Those flaming embers reached nine homes in the area.
Vancouver Fire and Rescue’s Assistant Chief Keith Stewart that of the nine homes where the firefighters battled the blaze, two were left uninhabitable while the rest suffered minor damage.
Homes on the north and south side of West 41st Avenue between Blenheim and Collingwood streets as well as homes on the south side of West 40th in the same block were evacuated.
Displaced residents or people needing assistance were directed to Crofton House School, about a block away.
The crane collapse pulled down power lines, damaging other electrical equipment and creating an outage for more than 760 customers, according to B.C. Hydro. Crews worked late into the evening, switching some customers to other circuits to restore power faster.
Early Wednesday morning, about 420 households were still without power. Hydro said it expects service to be restored later in the morning. Two homes also had their gas shut off, said Fortis B.C.
Witness Farnaz Amani said that at around 6:30 p.m. her father ran into their home at Collingwood Street and West 38th Avenue saying heavy smoke was coming from the corner of Collingwood Street and West 41st Avenue.
Amani said that as she stepped outside, she could see a tower of flames and, shortly after, heard several explosions.
She said that at around 7 p.m., she heard a loud crash and a few minutes later received a video from a friend that showed a crane collapsing to the ground across West 41st Avenue.
At around 7:30 p.m., as firefighters were still pouring water on the apartment fire, two large plumes of smoke could be seen two blocks to the west.
Within minutes, flames appeared as firefighters and police raced to the scene of several homes on fire.
One police officer emerged from the laneway behind a house fire at 38th Avenue and Highbury Street and urged people to leave.
An elderly couple carrying two metal safety boxes fled the scene.
Weeks said that there had been a gas line rupture and that some firefighters had suffered minor injuries.
By 9:30 p.m., the main fire was under control and crews were “mopping up,” Weeks said. The cause was under investigation.
It was a taxing evening for Vancouver firefighters, who two hours earlier were dealing with a fire in an abandoned apartment complex in east Vancouver. At 5 p.m., there were 39 firefighters and 12 fire trucks at that scene alone.
Sim thanked the city’s firefighters and police as well as fire crews from Richmond and Burnaby which assisted at the Dunbar blaze and other first responders.
He said the city’s resources were stretched “incredibly thin” fighting both fires.
“Our hearts go out to all these individuals who were affected in both those significant fires.”
— With files from Douglas Quan, Cheryl Chan and Canadian Press
