Ted Buckley awoke to the sounds of voices calling "fire, fire, fire" early Friday morning and quickly left with nothing but the clothes on his back.
A few hours later, a shell of a building was all that remained of his home, after fire gutted a three-storey apartment building at 404 Ash St.
"As soon as I opened the door, the hallway was filled with smoke," Buckley told The Record as he watched flames engulf the building. "I didn't want to take any chances."
All of the 36 tenants living in 31 units in the three-storey building made it out of the building unharmed, after the fire was detected at about 1:30 a.m. on Friday, Jan. 31.
“There was a fire in the suite above the main entrance,” said Deputy Fire Chief John Hatch. “It blew out the glass (patio) doors.”
When fire crews arrived at the building, they found a man with a portable extinguisher attempting to put out the fire on the second floor. By the time firefighters arrived at the building and targeted the area where the fire seemed to originate, Hatch said the fire was already in the ceilings and spreading quickly.
“Our crews noticed the floor was spongy,” Hatch said. “There was fire below.”
Firefighters evacuated people from the building and attempted to extinguish the fire, soon realizing they wouldn’t be able to save the building because it was spreading through the ceilings.
Hatch said the wood-frame apartment was built in 1969 and met the building code requirements of the time, which required a sprinkler system for the parkade and the mechanical rooms. Hatch couldn’t confirm reports that the fire alarm system didn’t sound on its own, but had to be manually pulled by someone in the building.
“Any time there is 36 residents that are displaced, that have lost everything they own, it heightens everyone’s awareness,” Hatch said. “It is not something anyone wishes on anyone. The community has been very proactive on assisting them. Now it is our job to make sure we are out there informing people that there is building protection systems in place.”
Hatch said the biggest lesson is that people should know fire alarm systems in buildings don’t automatically inform the fire department of fire because they may not be monitored.
“Just because you hear a fire alarm system activation make sure you clear the building, get out safely – but also phone 911,” he stressed. “If you are thinking we are coming because the building alarm system was activated, it might not be the case unless it has an automatic alarm system that notifies an alarm company.”
Some witnesses reported delays in the fire department’s arrival at the scene, but records indicate crews arrived within six minutes of getting the 911 call.
On Monday, Coun. Chuck Puchmayr put forward a notice of motion to have the federal and provincial governments make money available to retrofit older buildings with sprinkler systems. He said some new infrastructure funding that is being made available has a focus on addressing community safety.
According to Puchmayr, the City of New Westminster is unable to require buildings to require sprinklers to be installed into older buildings, as they were grandfathered into building codes that existed at the time they were constructed.
“No we can’t. Vancouver did it. Vancouver has a charter. They were able to actually impose that even though it is old buildings," he said. “With us, we fall under a different rule. Any time there is a code upgrade, we can’t force someone to meet the new code when they are already existing in an old code.”
Puchmayr said the city would end up in court by taking that kind of action.
“We are going to have a debriefing, and a good sit-down with our fire chief. We are going to have a look and see what we can do to up that game a little bit. Because of the volume of wood frame apartments we have in the city, and we all understand they are the lion’s share of our affordable housing, we are sensitive to the impacts of what the cost would be to retrofit these buildings,” he said. “Again, we want to make sure these buildings are safe.”
In the meantime, New Westminster Fire and Rescue Services is going to ramp up its mandatory biannual inspection program for three- and four-storey wood-frame buildings.
“We are now out focusing on the three-storey and four-storey wood-frame apartment buildings,” Hatch said. “We will be conducting our inspections to make sure all our inspection requirements are up to date, as well as any notice of violations that have been issued for work requirements relating to any deficiencies in the building.”
According to Puchmayr, staff informed him New Westminster has 364 wood-frame apartment buildings, with 64 per cent being built between 1950 and 1970. All new multi-family buildings constructed since 1991 require the installation of a fire sprinkler system as per the city’s bylaws.
Meanwhile, the cause of the fire is still under investigation.
“We do have some evidence that we have taken from the building. It is in the hands of our police now. We are working with them just to identify if that had any effect on the causation of the fire,” Hatch said. “We are not entertaining it as a suspicious fire at all.”
