After a fire in Vancouver’s Dunbar-Southlands neighbourhood destroyed a building under construction, damaged nearby homes, and forced several evacuations Tuesday, some locals are wondering what comes next.
The scene was chaotic, with large flames erupting from the construction site. A construction crane also collapsed across West 41st Avenue, crashing down onto power and trolley lines below.
Philip Vargas lives just a couple of homes away from the fire and remembers hearing what first sounded like explosions followed by sirens.
“I looked outside and my roommates were running around. We saw the fire — I could feel the heat from just across, from the backyard,” he recalled of the terrifying moments the blaze erupted.
Vargas was among a number of people who were forced to leave their homes due to the blaze, which ignited additional fires.
“I was like, ‘We got to go.’ I was telling everyone to go before the firefighters or anyone came to tell us to go,” Vargas told CityNews. “I was trying to pack up my things and then I was like, ‘wait, no, that’s not what you do in a fire.’”
It was when the crane came crashing down that he says firefighters came to rush everyone out of the house.
At least two homes near the building in the area of West 41st Avenue and Collingwood Street were damaged by the flames. The fire filled the area with thick plumes of smoke, with embers and ash also wafting onto nearby properties and roads.
Vargas says it was hard to see at first because of all the smoke, but he could still “feel the heat intensely.”
He ran out of his house, only grabbing his phone, keys, wallet, and computer.
“I stayed with my mom,” he said Wednesday. When CityNews spoke to the man, he claimed he didn’t know if his home was among those damaged, saying, “at this point, I don’t know anything.”
“It’s very stressful. I’m very lucky to have my mom, my family here with me on the other side of the city. But I know some of my roommates, they don’t have any family here because they’re from other countries. It’s hard for them too not knowing anything.”
Vargas admits it’s been a “surreal” experience.
‘It’s own kind of firestorm’
While the flames had been put out, the Dunbar-Southlands neighbourhood was still very active a day after the fire.
Firefighters and other crews remained in the area on Wednesday, putting out hot spots, cleaning up, and securing the scene of the fire.
Tuesday’s fire created “its own kind of firestorm,” according to Vancouver Fire Rescue Services Chief Karen Fry.
She said in an update Wednesday that the fire in Dunbar was reported around 6:30 p.m. Shortly after crews arrived, the construction crane at the scene collapsed.
‘The ground is a mess’
While there were no injuries reported, one person is incredibly lucky to be alive after the crane fell on their home.
“When you can see how close this crane came, it actually landed on a house — in the middle of a house — and an individual was trapped inside that house. Between our firefighters and VPD, we extricated that patient from a window in order to evacuate them from a house, when it was safe to do so,” Fry said.
She shared that two extra homes were lost to the Dunbar fire as a result of embers from the main apartment fire.
Many residents returned to the area on Wednesday to grab belongings, with an unclear timeline of when they’ll be allowed to return.
Some people were seen walking with suitcases as they left the area.
Charred debris remained scattered around nearby properties a day after the fire, as many surveilled damage and remnants of the blaze on their own homes.
Richard, who lives in the neighbourhood and was also among those forced to evacuate his home, spent much of Wednesday morning cleaning up around his property.
Thankfully, he says his home escaped any “real damage,” but he says “the ground is a mess,” covered in flakes of black.
“The fire was putting up a lot of embers, really, really high — hundreds of feet up — and it was coming down all over. So people were going up on their roofs to water them down and put out the embers that were coming on the roofs,” he recalled.
“Nobody’s going to clean it up unless the people who live around here do. I don’t know if this stuff is toxic or not.”
The fire department tells 1130 NewsRadio that people should not touch any debris, adding crews are doing some street sweeping to clear the area.
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However, another neighbour, Gloria, says she and other locals want to see the city take more action on fire prevention.
“The city should have more regulation, you know? To watch what’s going on, and inspectors should watch,” she said.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
The safety of wood-frame buildings
The building that went up in flames is a six-storey, wood-frame structure that had been under construction.
Felix Wiesner, an assistant professor in the department of Forestry at the University of British Columbia, says wood is, of course, a combustible material. He explains buildings that are built with wood are at higher risk of fire breaking out during construction.
“Most of the timber in a six-storey combustible wood building will be encapsulated, so hidden behind gypsum board. But during construction, all of that timber is available. So if there’s a fire, you have a very large fuel load potentially getting involved,” he explained.
“This is also reflected in a higher-risk profile. So, for example, insurance premiums for these types of buildings are usually higher, and that is in large part due to the risk of fires during construction, when not all fire safety features are implemented.”
However, once completed, and once safety features like sprinklers, alarms, and compartmentation are fully built in, Wiesner says wood-frame buildings are about as safe as concrete- or steel-frame buildings.
“I didn’t see the fire live. I did see the smoke from the fire where I live, so it was certainly a lot of fire with widespread consequences,” Wiesner said of the Tuesday evening blaze.
“In terms of safety features, wood is a combustible material and our building codes actually distinguish different building types when building with wood.”
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He says the Dunbar-area fire was a “combustible construction,” meaning the building can be up to six stories if there are sprinklers. He notes there are also “heavy-timber construction” and “encapsulated mass-timber construction,” the latter of which can build bigger buildings.
While more safety features are installed once a building is complete, Wiesner says builders will need to have certain precautions in place, like a water source in the event of a fire, once combustible materials are brought to the site.
Industry and the B.C. government have been moving toward using more timber in construction — even for high-rise buildings — because it can be cheaper and faster to build the housing supply needed in the province.
However, Wiesner says the sector is moving cautiously and upgrading the building code bit by bit to avoid any unintended risks to safety.
“We’re still learning a lot, so the building code is carefully increasing the allowable heights for mass-encapsulated-timber buildings. In this case, this wasn’t a mass-timber building. This was a wood-frame, how we’ve built for many years and have many buildings like this all around Vancouver,” he said.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
-With files from Charlie Carey