Resident details harrowing moment crane fell on neighbour's home during Vancouver fire

Grace Wuschke was making dinner when she thought she heard raindrops pelting her home in Vancouver's Dunbar area last week. She looked outside and saw a fire tearing through an apartment building under construction, just a few feet from her residence.

Before evacuating, she noticed her neighbour’s truck parked outside.

“I go over to the fireman and I tell him, 'This is our neighbour’s pickup,” she said. “He’s got to be in the house.”

Fire crews worked quickly, eventually rescuing the man from his washroom.

“There was so much noise with the sirens and the roar of the fire, that he could have been screaming his head off,” Wuschke said. “I wouldn't have heard him at all.

On Aug. 6, a fire broke out at an under-construction apartment building near Collingwood Street and West 41st Avenue. The fire caused a construction crane to fall across the road and onto Wuschke’s neighbour’s home. 

Nearly a week later, water is still spraying from what’s left of the structure.

“It is in shambles right now, and you can barely see the crane,” Wuschke said. “That scary moment – most of us will never have to live through that.”

Crane could take two weeks to remove

Saul Schwebs, a chief building official with the City of Vancouver, said the city is working on restoring the area. He added, the crane will likely take two weeks to remove.

“Given this is far from a routine operation this is going to be a demolition operation, not a salvage operation,” he said.

Schwebs added removing the crane is the city’s first priority.

“We anticipate we’ll be using a hydraulic shear mounted on the end of an excavator that can kind of reach out to the crane,” he said.

‘Things can be replaced’

Wuschke said she thinks it was a traumatic experience for her neighbour.

“I imagine when the crane fell, he had no idea initially what was happening because he was locked in a room,” she said.

Thankfully, no one was seriously injured in the fire or crane collapse.

“Things can be replaced,” Wuschke said. “Lives can’t.”