Fire at vacant Vancouver home under investigation

A fire in a vacant Vancouver home last night is being investigated by the Vancouver Police Department’s arson unit.

“It’s been deemed suspicious, so our fire investigations team is working with the VPD Arson Unit…to determine if someone is responsible,” said Jonathan Gormick, Public Information Officer for the Vancouver Fire Department.

It happened at a home at Arbutus Street and West 18th Avenue around 11 p.m. on February 5. The entire house was quickly engulfed, but over 30 firefighters were able to extinguish the flames without the fire spreading. Nobody was injured.

“It appears the house may have been used by transients,” said Gormick.

“There was a significant amount of debris on every floor of the house, up to a foot of garbage, which as you can imagine hampered attempts to get in and actually extinguish the fire.”

Todd Constant, who lives in the neighbourhood, says the house is one of many in the area that has been occupied by squatters for months, without any serious action being taken.

“Every night, these squatters are starting a fire to keep themselves warm. They use the bathtubs, there’s drywall around, they’ve been completely ripped up so it’s easy for things to catch. I’m sure they’re being careful because they don’t want to die in the fire, but the fact is things can get out of hand pretty quickly,” he said.

READ MORE: Empty houses drawing squatters across Vancouver’s Cambie Corridor

“The City of Vancouver isn’t doing things quick enough…once they do the approval and goes in front of council, things should move quite quickly to at least get the province to knock down the homes.”

In a statement, the City of Vancouver said that “where a Property Use Inspector was sent out to a property for issues such as squatters or standards of maintenance bylaw violations, there were 217 actions related to 90 addresses in 2014.”

Anyone with information on the fire is asked to phone the Vancouver Police Department.