Victoria fire chief reveals new details about blaze at historic Chinatown temple

A fire that tore through one of Victoria’s most important heritage landmarks may have damaged artifacts dating back to the earliest days of the city’s Chinatown, raising concerns about the fate of irreplaceable pieces of history.

On Tuesday, Victoria Fire Chief Dan Atkinson provided new details about Monday’s blaze at the Tam Kung Temple, located at 1713 Government St.

The fire broke out on the building’s top floor, where the temple is housed. Although crews quickly brought the flames under control, the area where the fire started sustained significant damage.

“We know that there were several artifacts up there ranging back to the late 1800s, right back to the origins of Chinatown itself,” Atkinson said.

Whether those items can be salvaged remains unclear.

The temple is recognized as Canada’s oldest Chinese temple and forms part of a National Historic Site of Canada. Established in 1905 and rebuilt in its current form in 1912, it has served as a place of worship and cultural preservation for more than a century.

Firefighters were called to the building shortly before 3 p.m. Monday after reports of smoke coming from the roof.

“Fortunately, our crews were able to make pretty quick entry and get that fire under control relatively quickly,” Atkinson said.

Crews also had to open sections of the building after the fire spread into concealed ceiling spaces.

“The fire did get into the void spaces in the ceiling, which resulted in fire spread that was outside of our regular line of sight,” Atkinson said. “We had to do some destructive overhaul in order to make sure that fire was fully put out.”

While the temple sustained extensive damage, Atkinson said the building itself was mostly preserved.

“The structure itself was largely saved,” he said. “There is some water damage in the suites below, but the structure itself is sound and stable and can be reoccupied at some time in the future.”

The overall cost of the damage has not yet been determined.

“It’s obviously very hard to put a dollar value on that type of historical significance,” Atkinson said.

Investigators remained at the scene after firefighters cleared the building and have since reached an early conclusion about what sparked the blaze.

“As it is, it’s not suspicious,” Atkinson said. “We’ve only completed a preliminary investigation at this time, but we can say with a high level of certainty that it’s accidental in nature.”

The exact cause of the fire has not been released, and no injuries were reported.

No one was inside the temple or the second-floor residential unit when the fire broke out. Employees at the ground-floor business, Smoking Lily, were safely evacuated, and firefighters helped remove much of the store’s merchandise before water damage reached the main floor.

The second-floor resident and the business tenant are expected to be displaced while restoration work is completed, though officials say it is too early to estimate when they may be able to return.

For many in Victoria’s Chinese community, the loss extends beyond the building itself.

The temple houses generations of history connected to one of the oldest Chinatowns in North America, making the damage difficult to measure in anything more than cultural significance.

As investigators continue working to determine the exact cause, attention is now turning to what can be preserved from one of Victoria’s most treasured historic sites.