The Vancouver Fire Rescue Services says a discarded cigarette sparked the massive fire that damaged four East Vancouver homes and displaced 11 people earlier this month.
The fire broke out just before 8 p.m. on Oct. 7. The VFRS says when the first engines arrived, they were met with “heavy smoke and flames showing.”
“They quickly upgraded it to a working fire and started trying their best to save the neighbouring homes. These homes are very close together on the street,” said Chief Karen Fry at the time.
Fry explained that four homes were damaged in the fire.
In an update Wednesday, VFRS says the fire was the result of a “carelessly discarded cigarette” in the backyard of one of the homes. The cigarette then “ignited combustibles and spread to trees and nearby homes.”
“There’s a lot of residents. These are multi-resident homes. … there’s going to be quite a bit of displacement, and the tenants here and occupants of these buildings are going to be looking for somewhere else to stay,” said Fry at the time.
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Glen Drive was blocked to traffic between Venables Street and East Hastings Street while firefighters were on scene.
All tenants were able to evacuate the homes, Fry said, with no reported injuries.
Capt. Matt Trudeau tells 1130 NewsRadio that investigators were on the scene for days following the fire.
“To make sure they go through the full scene, the witness testimony, any footage, anything in the area that’s applicable to the fire, for fire cause in origin. And after going through the area of origin at the back of the property, they determined that the cause of the fire was a carelessly discarded cigarette,” said Trudeau.
He says smokers’ material accounts for nearly 61 per cent of all the ignition sources for fires the VFRS have encountered this year.
Trudeau says a criminal investigation is outside the scope of VFRS, but the fire is not considered suspicious or intentional.
The lesson to be gained from the fire, Trudeau says, is to butt out cigarettes far from combustible material.
“I still see it quite often, where people will still flick cigarette butts out of windows, or if they’re out on break, they’ll flick them out into the street, back alleys into dumpsters, or a number of balcony fires have been caused by people putting cigarette butts into planters,” said Trudeau.
“The only proper disposal method for discarding any ignition source, like a match or a cigarette is in a metal container that has sand or water in it. There’s no other disposal method so that it gets completely put out all the ideally in water. That way all the heat is gone and then people can
dispose of them later when it’s completely saturated.”
He also urged the importance of working smoke alarms placed “outside of each sleeping area,” noting that the fire could have been deadly, given the time at night that it started.
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—With files from Charlie Carey, Monika Gul, Sonia Aslam, and Cole Schisler