Three fires sparked early Saturday morning caused the destruction of one apartment building in Castlegar.
The first came just after midnight in the 1100 block of 7th Avenue where the Castlegar Fire Department (CFD) said they were called to a vehicle fire and arrived only several minutess later.
“That fire, that initially started in the driveway where the vehicle was parked adjacent to the building, spread to the structure,” said Castlegar Fire Chief Sam Lattanzio. “It was parked underneath an overhang, which didn’t help, next to a pile of lumber and then it did of course to continue to grow rapidly and got to the point where it was a fully involved structure fire.”
Lattanzio said no one was injured in the fire as everyone in the four-unit complex was safely evacuated along with extra safety measures of evacuating residents of a nearby six-unit building.
Efforts to fully extinguish any leftover hotspots were ongoing at around 8:30 a.m. when crews decided to use an excavator to move through smouldering debris.
“It became a prolonged affair because the fire spread into the walls and into the roof,” Lattanzio added. “Plus location was a bit challenging, we had to watch out for overheads, couldn’t use all of our apparatus.”
Lattanzio pointed to a possible electrical malfunction in the parked vehicle as to the likely catalyst for the blaze.
Meanwhile, the CFD received a second fire call around 5:00 a.m. where a blanket was burning on the bike racks at the Kootenay Savings Credit Union on 20th Street.
Lattanzio said he deduced that the fire was the result of a makeshift homeless shelter.
“It’s quite obvious to me that is was probably used to cover the bike rack to create a shelter for some homeless individual who was sleeping there,” Lattanzio said.”I don’t think it was malicious or intentional.”
The final fire of the morning was called in at roughly 6:20 a.m. where firefighters responded to the property behind the Chevron at the 1900 block of Columbia Avenue.
Upon arrival, crews said tent and camping equipment were ablaze stemming from a fire at a nearby homeless camp. Both fires following the first apartment fire are under RCMP investigation, according to Lattanzio.
During the busy morning, a total of 15 firefighters responded to the flames along with two command vehicles and four fire trucks.
All of CFD’s units — four fire trucks and two command vehicles — responded to the fires, as well as fifteen firefighters.
“All of the tenants that were displaced because of that fire were and still are receiving assistance from our Red Cross Emergency Support Services Organization that we have,” Lattanzio added. “That’s going to help them at least for the next 72 hours. Anyways, they were all put up into hotels for the next few nights until they can find, hopefully, some other accommodations.”
