Vancouver firefighters seeing record-breaking number of Downtown Eastside fires
Vancouver Fire Rescue Services has been responding to a significantly increasing number of fires in the city's Downtown Eastside.
According to spokesperson Capt. Matthew Trudeau, the department has responded to 89 per cent more calls in the neighbourhood over the past three years.
"The indoor activity has gone up, the outdoor activity has gone up,” he told CTV News.
One of the things driving the surge in calls for service is a record-breaking number of blazes in the area's single room occupancy buildings. This year, they've responded to 265 fires – which works out to an average of one every 31 hours.
"They are high risk, they have a very at risk population inside, and we have a high fire activity as a result,” Trudeau said.
In addition to fires, crews are also being dispatched to the buildings for hundreds of other incidents.
"We’ve had over 450 calls this year alone to one SRO,” Trudeau said.
Trudeau says they’re also responding to an increased number of calls near an encampment on East Hasting Street, particularly recently.
"We’re seeing that specifically within the last month a dramatic increase in outdoor fires which is to be expected because of the colder temperatures,” said Trudeau.
In July, Fire Chief Karen Fry ordered tents and other structures to be removed from the stretch between Main and Carrall streets.
According to the City of Vancouver, there are currently 111 tents and structures in that area, down from 180 in August.
“As winter continues, the city's primary concern is ensuring people sheltering outdoors along East Hastings Street and other parts of the city, can come inside to ensure their safety and well-being," a spokesperson told CTV News in an email.
“BC Housing and the city are working together to rapidly deploy indoor spaces, such as shelters and SROs, to provide options for people to come inside,”
However, as advocate Sarah Blyth points out, those fires are very often the result of people simply doing what they have to do to survive.
"It's just a matter of staying alive during the freezing temperatures. It wouldn't be shocking if people were dying during this time,” she said.
“We need to step it up and get people into shelters.”
Blyth says although emergency shelters and warming centres do open up when temperatures plummet or snow falls, there is a persistent lack of long-term options.
“There’s a big problem in a big city with so much wealth, and a country with so much wealth when we’re not able to house such a vulnerable population,” she said.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Amid concerns over 'collateral damage' Trudeau, Freeland defend capital gains tax change
Facing pushback from physicians and businesspeople over the coming increase to the capital gains inclusion rate, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his deputy Chrystia Freeland are standing by their plan to target Canada's highest earners.
Bodies found by U.S. authorities searching for missing B.C. kayakers
United States authorities who have been searching for a pair of missing kayakers from British Columbia since the weekend have recovered two bodies in the nearby San Juan Islands of Washington state.
Tom Mulcair: Park littered with trash after 'pilot project' is perfect symbol of Trudeau governance
Former NDP leader Tom Mulcair says that what's happening now in a trash-littered federal park in Quebec is a perfect metaphor for how the Trudeau government runs things.
'It's discriminatory': Individuals refused entry to Ontario legislature for wearing keffiyeh
Individuals being barred from entering Ontario’s legislature while wearing a keffiyeh say the garment is part of their cultural identity— and the only ones making it political are the politicians banning it.
Competition bureau finds 'substantial' anti-competitive effects with proposed Bunge-Viterra merger
The proposed merger of agricultural giants Viterra and Bunge is raising competition concerns from the federal government.
Douglas DC-4 plane with 2 people on board crashes into river outside Fairbanks, Alaska
A Douglas C-54 Skymaster airplane crashed into the Tanana River near Fairbanks on Tuesday, Alaska State Troopers said.
BREAKING Mounties will not be charged in shooting death of B.C. Indigenous man
Three Mounties in British Columbia will not face charges in the killing of a 38-year-old Indigenous man on Vancouver Island in 2021.
Canada's favourite sport to watch is hockey, survey shows
The 2024 Stanley Cup playoffs have already delivered a fever level of fan excitement in Canada.
'It's just so hard to let it go': Umar Zameer still haunted by death of Toronto police officer
“It's just so hard to let it go. I mean, everyone is telling me, ‘you have to move on,’ but I know someone is not here [anymore]. So I don't know how I will move on." That’s what Umar Zameer, the man recently acquitted in the death of a Toronto police officer, told CTV News Toronto in a sit-down interview on Tuesday.