Ted Buckley awoke to the sounds of voices calling "fire, fire, fire" early this morning and quickly left with nothing but the clothes on his back.
It's the only thing he has left, after flames gutted a three-storey apartment building at the corner of Ash Street and Fourth Avenue. The fire was reported around 1:30 a.m.
"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."
New Westminster Police Chief Dave Jones said it’s believed all tenants in the three-storey wood-frame building at 404 Ash St. got out safely. He said tenants of adjacent buildings were also evacuated as a precautionary measure.
“We posted police in front of those evacuated buildings to ensure nobody went in,” said Blair Fryer, the city’s manager of economic development and communications. “We are working to get those people back into their homes.”
As of 9:30 a.m., firefighters continued to pour water onto the building as heavy smoke billowed into the air.
New Westminster Deputy Fire Chief John Hatch said neighbours across the street called in the fire.
“There was a fire in the suite above the main entrance,” he said. “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.
“Our crews noticed the floor was spongy,” Hatch said. “There was fire below.”
While firefighters can knock down a suite fire pretty quickly, Hatch said it’s challenging once fire gets into the roof. By the time firefighters arrived at the building and targeted the area where the fire seemed to originate, he said the fire was already in the ceilings and spreading quickly.
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. Forty New Westminster firefighters fought the blaze, along with additional firefighters from Burnaby and Delta.
“We did the best we could,” Hatch said.
Burnaby firefighters also responded to “multiple alarms” in other parts of the city.
Hatch said the wood frame apartment was built in 1969 and contained 35 suites.
“There is no sprinkler system,” he said. “It is protected by fire alarms.”
Although firefighters tackled the fire from units beside the point where it was first detected, Hatch said it was already in the ceilings and spread.
Witnesses told The Record the fire initially seemed to be contained to the centre portion of the building, but then flames started popping up throughout the structure. Shortly after 5 a.m., large sections of the apartment building began to collapse upon itself, leaving a heap of rubble and billowing smoke.
"I'm alive - that's all that matters," Buckley said. "And I've got work."
The city’s emergency command vehicle was stationed at the site, providing a place for investigators, staff from various city departments to meet. Determining a cause for the fire could be difficult.
“The challenge now is the building collapsed into the area where we think the fire originated,” Hatch said. “We will start in that area, a larger perimeter, and work our way into that area. It will be challenging for the investigative team.”
According to Fryer, Emergency Support Services is working with B.C. Housing arrangements for tenants whose homes were destroyed by the fire.
