Dozens homeless after fires tears through East Van apartment

CTV Vancouver: Fire destroys apartment complex More than a dozen people were forced to flee their homes after a fire broke out at an East Vancouver apartment building overnight.

A massive fire that tore through an East Vancouver apartment has left dozens of residents homeless as investigators try to figure out what caused the blaze.

The fire broke out at around midnight at a building on East Broadway near Fraser Street and quickly escalated.

“I think it had a really good hold of the building before we got here,” said Joe Foster, assistant chief of emergency management for Vancouver Fire Rescue. “The crews arrived and immediately upgrade the alarm to a second-alarm.”

The fire eventually required a third alarm as crews battled the stubborn flames. Firefighters said some of the residents had cleared out by the time they arrived, and the rest were safely escorted from the building without any injuries.

Two surrounding buildings suffered some smoke and water damage, according to Foster.

Later, the façade of the apartment building came off and crashed to the sidewalk, but no one was struck.

Residents described some of the heroics that took place in the building after the fire broke out.

Mike Dewall said he smelled smoke at around midnight and 10 minutes later, a neighbour knocked on his door to alert him of the blaze.

“My first instinct was wake my girlfriend up, get her out of the house, then run around the rest of the apartment building and wake up everybody I could, so I went and knocked on all the doors,” he said. “One family above me was passed right out and the only reason they woke up was because I went and knocked on the door.”

Emily Lambrecht had just fallen asleep when she started to smell what she thought was a bonfire.

“I don’t know what woke me up, and I go and turn on my light switch and I can’t even see my hand,” she said. When she opened up her back door, she saw smoke billowing from her building. “My deck up to my back door, I saw it go up in flames…I could have still been sleeping.”

All residents, some of whom said they do not have renters insurance, are being put up in a nearby hotel by the province and were given a voucher to buy groceries.

Fire officials said the cause of the blaze is still under investigation but haven’t confirmed whether or not it looks suspicious. They said it appears the flames originated on the ground level in a small eight-inch space between two of the buildings.

The decades-old apartment building is expected to be demolished while the two surrounding buildings will eventually be reopened.

Officials estimated 20 to 25 people live in the residential building. Two residents were not accounted for as of Saturday afternoon, but there are no indications they were in the building when the blaze broke out.