Vancouver firefighters were stretched Thursday night, as they attended to two residential building fires simultaneously.
At 9:27 p.m. a call came in about a working fire that started in the kitchen of a top-floor suite of a two-storey walk-up apartment building on Granville Street at West 70th Avenue.
Assistant Fire Chief Ken Gemmill tells Global News fire crews arrived to find flames leaping out of a top floor window and the building’s roof.
Granville&72nd Fire – Vancouver Sept 16th @CTVVancouver @CTVNews @GlobalBC @globalnews thank you for our heros @VanFireRescue pic.twitter.com/1aqlrtiExY
— Arda Yazgan (@yzgn12) September 18, 2020
Twitter video courtesy of Arda Yazgan
Crews soon brought the fire under control, with fire damage limited to the single suite.
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Two occupants of that suite were sent to hospital for treatment, one for 2nd-degree burns and the other for smoke inhalation.
The building’s other 8 suites all suffered smoke and water damage, resulting in the building’s 25 occupants all being displaced.
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Minutes after that first fire call came in, Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services received word of another fire at the former Biltmore Hotel, now a social housing building, at 395 Kingsway near Prince Edward Street.
The fire apparently started in a sixth-floor suite of the hotel.
Fire damage to the suite was minimal, but the rest of the building took on a lot of water and smoke damage, displacing the hotel’s 20 occupants.
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In all, some 45 Vancouver residents are out of their homes because of these two fires.
The city’s Emergency Support Services is working with those residents to find them suitable accommodation.