A firefighter walks in front of the Winters Hotel apartment building that was destroyed by fire, in Vancouver, on April 12.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
Two people remain in hospital after a massive fire at a dorm-style apartment building in Vancouver’s historic Gastown neighbourhood that displaced nearly 150 residents, many of them vulnerable renters.
After the fire gutted the four-storey Winters Hotel late Monday morning, B.C.’s provincial housing agency said Tuesday it is now scrambling to rehouse 71 tenants of the century-old building, which is owned by a private landlord and operated by non-profit Atira Property Management. A further 73 people have been evacuated from the neighbouring Gastown Hotel, also run by Atira, after smoke contaminated that building. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
Atira chief executive officer Janice Abbott told The Globe in a phone interview on Tuesday that the number of donations rolling in for the evacuees, most of whom were paying rent with provincial income assistance, has been “overwhelming.” Still, she said, many of the displaced people are in need of plates and other pieces of kitchenware as they navigate new lives in nearby shelters, the homes of friends or vacant units in other Atira buildings.
Mayor Kennedy Stewart said at a Tuesday press conference that the Winters Hotel is part of Vancouver’s aging buildings stock that house 7,000 or so people in tiny apartments with shared bathrooms down the hall. Amid a years-long housing crisis, he said it is crucial these units remain safe as Vancouver pursues its $1-billion plan to buy up to 105 of these privately owned single-room occupancy (SRO) hotels with the help of federal and provincial funding.
“I feel very good about those conversations, I feel that both the federal and provincial housing ministers understand the dire circumstances of many of these buildings,” said Mr. Stewart, flanked by fire, police and city officials. “[Monday’s] fire and the repercussions over the coming weeks and months definitely underscore the need for that support.”
He said that the city’s senior officials and lawyers will soon discuss what should happen to the property, which has to be professionally demolished as soon as possible. A large portion of Vancouver’s poorest residents live packed into these rooming houses, many of which were built a century ago for single loggers and fishermen – blue-collar workers who adorn either side of the city’s official coat of arms.
Ms. Abbott said all the residents are believed to have escaped the fast-moving fire, but efforts were still under way to locate one tenant who is thought to be staying elsewhere.
The building had a functioning sprinkler system, Ms. Abbott said, but it was not active when a fire started Monday on the second floor. That’s because it went off on Friday evening after a small fire was accidentally started in one room and was waiting to be reset by a technician, who was called on Saturday morning, she said. In the meantime, Atira staff were making rounds of the building to check for fires, as ordered by the fire department. She could not say how often these patrols occurred.
Vancouver Fire Rescue Services Chief Karen Fry said at Tuesday’s press conference that the last official inspection of the building happened in September and her agency found everything up to code. Fire investigators have not yet determined how or why the massive blaze started, or substantiated rumours that fire alarms and extinguishers weren’t working Monday because they had been damaged or discharged following the smaller fire before the weekend, Ms. Fry said.
A restaurant and shops were also heavily damaged at the street level and five people were treated in hospital, including one who had jumped from an upper-floor window, she said, adding that two people remained in hospital Tuesday morning.
“This building houses some of our most precious residents in our city and the impact to them is going to be very traumatic,” Ms. Fry said.
With a report from The Canadian Press
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Mike Hager