Fire crews had quite the eventful Canada Day long weekend, responding to hundreds of emergency calls.
Vancouver Fire Rescue Services (VFRS) said in a social media post that between Friday and Monday, its crews responded to 773 calls for help.
It says, of those calls, 35 were fire calls, 6 were about single room occupancy fires, 11 were rubbish fires, and others included cooking fires, brush fires and car fires.
VFRS Public Information Officer Matthew Trudeau tells CityNews that the number of calls was well above average.
“We had a number of serious calls of various natures,” he said. “Those were ranging from small set fires on the street to larger brush fires in wooded areas.”
He says thankfully the fires weren’t that dry where it grew exponentially. However, he says some of the fires were caused by people not being mindful enough.
“There’s a number of cooking fires and unintended cooking fires where people were not just not mindful of what they were cooking, or left the pot on the stove too long,” he said.
“A few minutes longer: those could turn into very serious kitchen fires and unit fires.”
Trudeau says when people are more active, it is natural for the number of calls to increase.
“The crews were definitely very busy over the weekend,” he said. “There’s just a higher likelihood of more calls happening for everything from just general medical calls, car accidents.”
Trudeau says around this time, fire crews do expect to see increased temperatures and he asks people to be mindful of all their outdoor ignition sources and to get rid of them.
“Whether it be cigarettes smoking, any backyard barbecues people are having, cooking devices on beaches, if you have any extra vegetation, any extra switch storage, anything combustible outside that really doesn’t need to be there,” he said.
-With files from Maria Vinca.