Residents in Vancouver’s West Side are still waiting to return to their homes the morning after a fire at a construction site on Tuesday evening spread onto neighbouring houses and toppled a crane.
Vancouver Fire Rescue Services (VFRS) Chief Karen Fry said at a news conference Wednesday that it’s not clear yet what caused the fire to ignite around 6:30 p.m. PT — or what caused the construction crane to collapse into a house in the Dunbar neighbourhood.
When the six-storey wooden frame of a building under construction caught fire, 11-year-old Alice Kviselius was in the kitchen of her nearby home waiting for her mother to make dinner.
“I was home with my little brother. He pointed through the kitchen window, and said, ‘Look, there’s a fire,'” Alice told CBC News on Wednesday. “We heard a lot of booms from the crane and wood falling down.”
Her father, Mioi Sawada, had just returned home from work and, by around 7 p.m., decided to get everyone out of the house. His family also helped their 95-year-old neighbour evacuate.
Sawada said he and his family watched the fire from down the street.
“The heat was insane. It was so uncomfortable that I didn’t want to go any closer,” he said. “It was like getting too close to a campfire.”
A massive fire erupted amid explosions and a crane collapsed at a construction site near 41st and Collingwood on Vancouver’s West Side before 7 p.m. PT. No injuries have been reported, according to a B.C. Provincial Health Services.
By Wednesday morning, about a dozen firefighters were still at the scene ensuring hotspots didn’t reignite the flames, VFRS said.
The crane was still lying in the street, and West 41st Avenue remained closed from Collingwood Street to Dunbar Street.
Fry said the crane, on the east end of the block, crashed into a house, but firefighters brought one resident out safely through a window.
Embers spread the flames to several houses in the area, Fry said, and firefighters were able to save all homes except two — one directly next to the initial fire, and one several blocks away.
No residents were injured, but a couple of firefighters suffered minor injuries, VFRS said.
In an email Wednesday, WorkSafeBC told CBC News that an officer was on the scene and investigating.
‘The fire was really crazy’
Slava Shegai said he was about to sit down for dinner with his family Tuesday evening, when his neighbours told him the construction site was on fire.
While at first he went to watch, he said he quickly realized the fire was dangerous. He and his partner collected their four children and left.
“The fire was really crazy,” he said.
Video from the scene shows flames rising above the tops of the trees that line the neighbourhood, and a pillar of black smoke rising into the air.
Shegai said it looked like firefighters had mostly extinguished the flames by about 11 p.m.
Sawada said the streets nearby were packed with people.
“It was crazy the number of people that was here,” he said. “It was just so hot. There were embers falling everywhere.”
Unsafe to return home for now
Sawada said he and his family waited to see if they would be allowed back in their home that night. They weren’t.
The City of Vancouver directed displaced residents to Crofton House School at 3200 W. 41st Ave., where city staff were on site to provide assistance.
While neither Sawada’s or Shegai’s family’s home was damaged in the fire, firefighters told them Wednesday morning it still wasn’t safe to return.
Shegai was able to retrieve a suitcase of essentials from his home Wednesday after his family spent the night in a hotel.
“It’s a big stress for the family, because we have small kids. Everyone was a little bit scared,” he said. “We didn’t sleep well — we’re exhausted — but we are figuring out what’s next.”
Sawada’s family also spent the night in a hotel, before returning home briefly around 10 a.m. to collect a few important belongings. They’re now planning to stay with family until it’s deemed safe to return home.
“The firefighters did a great job,” Sawada said. “We’re going to decompress a little bit, try to get everything together, and then try to figure out the next steps.”
B.C. Hydro said the crane also crashed through power lines, causing an outage that affected 760 customers on Tuesday night. By around 2 p.m. Wednesday, around 130 were still without power.
2nd major fire within hours
The fire broke out a few hours after an abandoned apartment block in East Vancouver went up in flames.
Mayor Ken Sim said in an unrelated news conference that the two fires around the same time stretched the department’s resources “incredibly thin.”
He said his heart goes out to all those affected by the fires.