Efforts are underway to find housing for displaced residents of a rooming hotel that has been reduced to a shell by fire in Vancouver’s Gastown neighbourhood.
Flames broke out in the 110-year-old building before noon on Monday and the fire department said the roof of the four-storey brick structure had collapsed within hours.
Shops, restaurants and businesses were heavily damaged below the 89-room Winters Hotel on the building’s upper floors, which is overseen by Atira Property Management and provided housing for 71 residents.
Five people were treated in hospital, including one who fire Chief Karen Fry said she was told by paramedics had jumped from an upper-floor window.
Atira CEO Janice Abbott says in an email that four people have since been released from hospital and she was awaiting word on the condition of the fifth.
Abbott says it’s believed all the residents escaped the fast-moving fire, but efforts were underway to locate one tenant who is thought to be staying elsewhere.
On Monday, Fry said the building was recently inspected and had a working sprinkler system, but Abbott said she understands the system was waiting to be reset after a small fire in the building last Friday.
“A call was made to reset the system Saturday morning,” Abbott said in the email, adding it was the best information available to her but the situation remained “dynamic.”
Officials said fire investigators were trying to determine how the fire started and which of the surrounding evacuated buildings could be safely reoccupied while the outer walls of the fire-damaged building were stabilized.
Efforts to find new homes for the displaced residents were getting underway, Abbott said in the email.
“We have a plan,” she said, adding that it was still coming together early Tuesday.
Abbott said the response has been “overwhelming” after an appeal was made for donations of socks, underwear, bedding and other necessities because the tenants lost everything.
