Demolition is underway Friday morning on an apartment building in East Vancouver that’s been the site of three fires over the past year.
Crews are at Guelph Street and East 10th Avenue, in the city’s Mount Pleasant neighbourhood.
The apartment building has been vacant since July 2023, when more than 70 people were displaced after a major fire broke out.
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Last year, residents said their possessions were burned, smoke damaged, and later looted before they were able to collect what they could from the remnants of the initial fire.
Weeks after that fire, CityNews learned that the building owners had been accused of violating multiple fire codes.
No one was hurt in the latest fire which happened just week, however, Assistant Fire Chief Keith Stewart told CityNews that while no one was discovered inside, Stewart suspects the fire was caused by a person who had been in the already burned building.
One former resident, Taylor Calhoun, told 1130 NewsRadio last week that the building should have been destroyed after the first fire. Instead, she says her and other residents’ belongings were there as fuel for future fires.
“Everybody had to leave their furniture. No one was allowed to take furniture with them — so couches, beds, things like that. We had very limited time to go in, so people still had a lot of their lives in there where they couldn’t take it. So, there was still a lot of stuff in that building. And again, the whole structure, which is made almost entirely of wood, I believe, caused it to be as bad as it was,” said Calhoun.
The building’s owner have been hit with multiple fire code violations, which they have tried fighting in court.