Photos and videos of a devastating fire that razed a downtown Vancouver SRO, killing two people and displacing 140 others, dominated the fifth day of a B.C. coroner’s inquest into the fatalities.
The disturbing images included redacted scenes of where the bodies of Mary Ann Garlow, 63, and Dennis James Guay, 53, were found in the wreckage 11 days after the fire at the Winters Hotel on April 11, 2022.
Evidence presented also included videos of neighbours, staff and fire crews frantically trying to rescue the building’s occupants and douse the flames consuming the four-storey heritage building at Abbott and Water streets.
Lt. Jason La Greca, a Vancouver Fire Rescue Services investigator at the time, told the inquest jury that an unusual amount of “misinformation” was circulating during the emergency response.
At one point, he testified that fire crews believed 11 people were still inside the building.
“A lot of people would scatter and leave and we didn’t know if they were still in the building or actually left,” said La Greca, who now works as a fire inspector in Nova Scotia.
“In my whole career, that was probably one of the most hectic fires.”
Friday’s testimony included the first suggestion that fire alarms may have, in fact, gone off in the Winters Hotel that day.
Multiple people have previously testified there were no working fire alarms in the building and the sprinklers — which had not been reset from a fire three days earlier — did not activate.
Witness Jesse Smith, who provided pet outreach services to the Winters Hotel at the time of the fire, said she heard the beeping of smoke alarms when the fire began. At first, she did not hear a fire alarm, but in a video she took later — presented as evidence — an apparent fire alarm is audible.
La Greca called it “interesting,” as his reports from the disaster indicated no such alarm had gone off, nor did he hear one personally. The bell sounds heard in Smith’s video, however, are consistent with what he would “expect to have heard with the system that was in that building,” he testified.
Vancouver Fire Rescue Services (VFRS) has said unattended candles were to blame for the fire — the second one in under a week at the Winters Hotel. To date, much of the inquest testimony has focused on an April 8, 2022, blaze that was extinguished by the SRO’s sprinklers.
After that incident, VFRS issued a notice of violation to the property’s owner — Atira Women’s Resource Society — to have the fire safety systems serviced and the sprinklers reset. It put the building under a fire watch until that work was complete.
On Thursday, Winters Hotel manager Gina Vanemberg testified that she didn’t call the only approved company she could to get that work done — Royal City Fire Supplies — right away because it was a Friday evening and she thought she would just receive an automated message telling her she would receive a response on Monday.
Global News called Royal City Fire Supplies, and was told that the company would indeed respond to a weekend call for service, but it would cost a premium rate. Vanemberg told the inquest that staff had been instructed not to use companies that would charge overtime, or any companies not on the approved list.
Vanemberg told the jury that Royal City was scheduled to come and service the Winters Hotel the same day of the fatal fire.
She also testified that she received no formal fire safety training from Atira Property Management and had never participated in a building fire drill, because of gathering restrictions in place when she took over the SRO in 2020. At that time, she said she received a “red book” of fire safety procedures, but no one from Atira ever reviewed it with her or confirmed that she had read it.
At the Burnaby courthouse on Friday, Smith said she had never heard fire alarms go off in the building prior to the fatal fire. She said she had no training on its fire alarm systems and did not know for certain how they were activated.
La Greca testified that it’s a fire code requirement that people who live and work in a building be familiar with its pull stations. Workers must also be involved in a fire safety plan and educated on it, he added.
Juan Rave Soto, a former health and safety compliance specialist for Atira, testified that he visited the Winters Hotel and met Vanemberg in 2022, before the April fire. At that time, he said he asked her for a fire safety plan.
He also testified that Vanemberg informed him of certain challenges in the building, such as some residents covering or removing smoke detectors that interfered with their indoor smoking, or damaging the fire system on purpose as it would be triggered when they used the fire exits, and some people didn’t want anyone knowing when they were going in and out.
However, he had never done a walkthrough of the Winters Hotel.
Earlier this week, a neighbouring business owner and a tenant’s cousin testified that they had seen chained up doors or fire exits in the building.
Like Vanemberg, Smith said Friday said she had not observed any such obstructions at the Winters Hotel.
Smith recalled the “crackling” of burning wood on April 11, and running back into the building to grab carriers for the tenants escaping with pets. She said she could hear people in the building, yelling, and thought about running up to the second floor to try and rescue people, but decided it was unsafe.
The City of Vancouver has indicated that firefighters performed a primary search for occupants of the Winters Hotel when it first went up in flames. Normally, a second search is performed, but in their “defensive attack,” firefighters exited the building to fight the flames from outside and it was “too dangerous” to allow them to search the second floor and above.
The three-week inquest is expected to hear testimony from close to 30 witnesses, including doctors, police and fire officials. Legal counsel for the victims’ families, the City of Vancouver, the B.C. government, Winters Residence Ltd., BC Housing, the Management Commission, and Atira have attended.
In a statement posted to its website, Atira said it looks “forward to the final coroner’s report setting the record straight on the facts, so we all can take the necessary actions going forward to improve safety and provide clarity for everyone.”
“There is still considerable work to be done with BC Housing to support the building and safety upgrades that are desperately needed to provide safe and appropriate housing for this community,” it added.
“As an operator of this housing, much of which is over 100 years old, Atira has the data to show that maintenance and repair is a continuous and ongoing challenge given the age of these buildings.”
The inquest has heard that the hallways and doorways of the Winters Hotel were cluttered with hoarded items, bicycles, extension cords, electronics, and other items. A fire captain has testified he had a “bad feeling” about the building, which was in “disrepair.”
The inquest will not make a determination of fault, but will document the facts related to Garlow’s and Guay’s deaths, including the causes and circumstances. Both of their families have attended the inquest, at times, sitting in tears.
Garlow and Guay have both been described as kind souls who gave their time to others. Garlow was considered a mother figure to many living in the Downtown Eastside, while Guay was known as a storyteller and music lover.
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