New Westminster firefighters returned to a familiar scene to douse a small fire Tuesday morning.
Crews were called to the 600 block of Front Street, where a rubbish fire was reported at the site of last October’s devastating fire to the E.L. Lewis and the Hamley blocks.
“It was a rubbish fire down at the old Lewis site where Copp’s Shoes was. There was some rubbish that was burning in there,” said deputy fire chief John Hatch. “It was nothing major.”
Columbia Street had to be closed to traffic temporarily because of smoke generated by the fire. After extinguishing the rubble fire, firefighters remained on scene to ensure no further flare-ups occurred.
“They are keeping an eye on it now,” Hatch said. “There is still a lot of rubble in the building.”
While some of the debris resulting from the Oct. 10 fire has been removed from the site, some still remains. Two buildings were destroyed and numerous businesses displaced in the fire at two of the downtown’s most prominent heritage buildings.
“It is a closed site. I don’t really have any information about how it got started,” Hatch said. “We do have a fire investigator down there right now working with the police team.”
Firefighters at the scene told The Record they had to break the windows of the adjacent building at 613 Front St. so they could get inside and pressurize the building so the fire wouldn’t travel into that space.
