Two people are dead and two more are lucky to be alive after a wall of smoke and flames engulfed an abandoned warehouse in East Vancouver early Monday morning.
Craigh Pushie and Samona Marsh were visiting friends who were squatting in the building near East Hastings Street and Campbell Avenue. The pair had to break a second-floor window to get out of the building. Their friends, a man in his 30s and his mother, were not so lucky.
“I couldn’t go back in because the smoke was too thick,” Pushie said. “The chances of them getting out were very, very, very little. I tried to go back in there and I couldn’t.”
After they broke the window, Pushie and Marsh held onto the window ledge on the second floor for roughly 15 minutes in order to escape the blaze.
“It felt like hours,” Marsh said.
“They were both literally hanging from the windowsill,” said Ron Coulson, assistant chief for Vancouver Fire and Rescue. “They’ve both been rescued by ground ladders and sent by [ambulance] to hospital.”
It took 55 firefighters several hours to knock the fire down. Crews had to keep their distance because the building’s roof and walls were collapsing, making it too dangerous to attack from the inside.
The building itself was slated for demolition, and had already been partially torn down, which created additional challenges for firefighters.
The fire was first reported around 2 a.m., with one witness telling CTV News flames were shooting more than 20 metres into the air.
At 8 a.m., the fire was largely out, but crews were still battling occasional flare-ups.
By noon, firefighters had confirmed that two bodies were found inside the building and contacted the Vancouver Police Department’s coroner to the scene.
The deceased have not been identified.
East Hastings Street was closed in both directions for several hours as a result of the blaze.
