Tenants at the Winters Hotel had “complex needs” that, in the days ahead of a deadly fire, pulled the attention of its staff in multiple directions, a B.C. coroner’s inquest has heard.
Grant Barton, managing director of Atira Property Management, testified Wednesday that while the aging heritage building had been placed on a round-the-clock fire watch before the April 11, 2022, disaster, staff may have been forced to choose between administering life-saving naloxone, for example, and conducting the necessary visual patrols required under fire watch protocols.
He cited overdoses, psychosis and building “guests” as some of the challenges the non-profit’s employees would sometimes contend with, all while dealing with the heightened responsibility of marching orders from Vancouver Fire Rescue Services (VFRS).
“One of the biggest challenges is knowing we have the other duties that come with the complex needs ,” Barton told jurors at the Burnaby courthouse. “We could call Car 87 or the teams that deal with mental health, but sometimes they don’t show and we’re left to deal with it ourselves.”
The Car 87 program pairs a Vancouver police constable with a registered nurse or a registered psychiatric nurse to provide on-site assessments and intervention for folks living with mental illness.
Three days before the Winters Hotel burned down, killing 63-year-old Mary Ann Garlow and 53-year-old Dennis James Guay, the four-storey building had experienced another fire in one of its units.
The April 8, 2022, fire was extinguished by the building’s sprinklers, and VFRS issued the SRO a notice of violation to the property owner — Atira — and ordered it to have the sprinklers reset and the fire systems serviced, and placed it under the fire watch. According to a fire captain who attended that day, the building’s alarms never went off.
Earlier in the inquest, Winters Hotel manager Gina Vanemberg testified that she didn’t called the only approved company she could — Royal City Fire Supplies — to have the servicing work done right away, because it was a Friday evening and she thought an automated message would take her call and tell her she would receive a response the next Monday. She also said last week that she and other staff were under instructions not to call anyone who would charge overtime as “budget” was a priority.
A representative of Royal City Fire Supplies has testified that the company’s services are available 24/7, but weekend service does indeed cost a premium.
With regard to the April 8 fire, Barton told the inquest Wednesday that “fire, life and safety should’ve been called … we would never complain about the money spent there.” He also said that while staff weren’t supposed to call vendors for plumbing or electrical service, the restrictions didn’t apply to fire, life and safety.
Alex Eged, lawyer for Winters Residence Ltd., suggested that if a call to Royal City Supplies had been done right away or even over the weekend, “it appears the April 11 fire wouldn’t have happened.”
“The fire might have been knocked down if there was one more extinguisher available,” Eged said.
Added Barton, “The call, if it happened, would’ve changed the trajectory of this.”
The sprinklers did not go off on April 11 and there have been some conflicting reports about whether the fire alarms did.
Vanemberg said she had Royal City Fire Supplies scheduled to come on April 11, but the fatal fire broke out first.
Over nearly two weeks of witness testimony from victims’ families, Atira staff, Vancouver fire officials and others, the inquest has heard that the Winters Hotel was a repeat violator of fire safety rules that resulted in multiple tickets and notices issued. In April and June of 2021, VRFS Capt. Cliff Lee testified the Winters Hotel had “unsatisfactory” inspection results.
Last week, the City of Vancouver’s head of property use inspection said he visited the SRO in October that year. Mark McLellan testified that it had 18 life-safety violations, including missing smoke detectors, items hanging off the sprinkler lines, and non-operational fire door closures.
When VFRS Capt. Kris Zoppa visited the rooming house on April 8, he told the inquest he got a “a bad feeling about that building,” noting that the fire alarms weren’t working, it was in general “disrepair” and tenants’ hoarded items were posing a safety risk.
The inquest has also heard about a lack of fire safety training for staff, an absence of building fire drills, and that no special accommodations existed to alert Guay, who had profound hearing loss, of a fire watch or emergency evacuation. Guay and Garlow’s bodies were found 11 days after the fatal fire, in the wreckage of the demolished building.
Multiple people who work for Atira have said they didn’t know about Guay’s hearing loss, but Vanemberg — who did — said her efforts to get him a modification, such as a vibrating bed or flashing light, fell flat at BC Housing.
Barton told jurors Wednesday that Guay should have been placed in another SRO that had strobes to visually alert occupants to a fire.
Witness testimony was initially scheduled to wrap up on Thursday, but the inquest is scheduled to Feb. 9. Its jury will not make a determination of fault in Guay’s and Garlow’s deaths, but rather document the facts, causes and circumstances around them.
The tenants of the Winters Hotel have launched a class action lawsuit alleging not enough was done to prevent the fire. That class action does not appear to have been verified yet. More than 100 people were displaced by the fire. The Winters Hotel also housed a women’s shelter and seven businesses.
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