Flames tear through East Van apartment, displacing residents

Fire displaces dozens in East Van Dozens were forced from their homes after a fire broke out in an apartment complex.

Dozens of residents have been forced out of their homes after a two-alarm fire ripped through an apartment complex in East Vancouver.

Fire officials said the blaze started on the top floor of the three-storey building on Wall Street shortly after 7 p.m. on Friday.

Residents quickly fled with whatever they could bring.

"It was very scary because I couldn't find my cane and I went out in my pajamas," said Tracy Lapointe.

Fire officials said flames moved aggressively through the older building.

"It's a wood-frame structure and there are no sprinklers, certainly it could extend to the adjacent suites and into the roof structures and be a much larger fire," said assistant fire chief Dave Boone.

Boone called the third floor "uninhabitable" and the people in those 19 suites are being looked after by emergency social services.

Three people were treated by paramedics on scene for smoke inhalation while another three were taken to hospital for observation.

Lapointe was one of the six who suffered smoke inhalation.

"I was just scared to go sleep because I thought, 'Ok, as soon as I go to sleep, is there going to be another fire?'"

This isn't the first fire the building has experienced in the last while.

Last month, a fire broke out in a different section of the complex. In that incident, a man was found unconscious in his second-floor apartment.

He was taken to hospital and succumbed to his injuries. His death marked the city's eighth fire fatality of 2018.

No word on the cause of this recent fire.

With files from CTV Vancouver's Emad Agahi