'I had a bad feeling about this building': Fire captain says SRO was under fire watch at time of deadly blaze

When a devastating fire burned through the Winters Hotel and killed two people, the Vancouver SRO was supposed to be on a 24-hour fire watch because of a blaze just days earlier.

Vancouver Fire Captain Kris Zoppa told a coroner’s inquest he had a bad feeling about the Winters Hotel after attending a separate fire there just three days before a second blaze that killed Mary Ann Garlow and Dennis James Guay on April 11, 2022.

“I don’t like this building…I had a bad feeling about this building,” he told the inquest Tuesday.

“I didn’t like when I got there, the alarms weren’t going off. I don’t like hoarding,” Zoppa said.

He said the suite where the first fire occurred didn’t have a smoke detector and no fire alarm was sounding when he arrived. The sprinklers had gone off, but were later turned off to prevent flooding.

Zoppa said he issued a violation notice requiring that the alarm and sprinkler systems be returned to working order immediately. The building was to be patrolled regularly until that work was done and inspected.

But the inquest heard Monday from witness Misty Fredericks, Garlow's niece. She said Garlow’s son told her the sprinklers were not working when the deadly blaze began.

Zoppa also said that the day of the first fire, he wrote up two complaints about the Winters Hotel, adding that the building was in disrepair.

A former tenant of the hotel also took the stand.

He said he repeatedly raised safety concerns with a building manager and also filed a complaint with the City of Vancouver.

One of those complaints was about chains on the fire escapes. He couldn’t say if city staff followed up on his complaints, but he did say he was threatened by a manager with eviction for speaking out.

“She said, ‘I should have kicked you out when I could have,'” the former tenant told the inquest.

He also spoke about conditions in the building.

“There was no day I didn’t see cockroaches in my unit. We not only have cockroaches, we have mice,” he said.

The inquest also heard from forensic pathologist, Dr. Eric Bol. He testified Garlow and Guay died by thermal injury and smoke inhalation caused by the fire.