'We were ignored': Shopkeeper testifies firefighters were warned people were still inside the Winters Hotel

The owner of a business that was destroyed when Vancouver’s Winters Hotel caught fire nearly two years ago believes lives could have been saved if the building’s fire extinguishers hadn’t been empty.

At the B.C. Coroner’s Inquest, Neda Pessione testified that her husband ran into the building and tried to put out the April 11, 2022 fire, but couldn’t, because none of the extinguishers were working.

“He said, ‘They are all empty. There were eight of them in a row on the second floor, and we tried every single one of them. They were empty,’” recalled Pessione.

Dennis Guay and Mary Ann Garlow were killed in the fire on Abbott Street.

Pessione knew them well, and described them as friendly and compassionate people.

She said Garlow would head out every morning to do her shopping, and that’s exactly what she did the morning of the fire.

“I still remember what she was wearing,” Pessione told CTV News. “I remember her response to my ‘hello.’ I remember her groceries in her hands. I remember all of that, so this is something that’s going to stay with me and I'm coping with it.”

Pessione told the jury that she didn’t see the couple leave the building, and informed firefighters.

“Me and my husband, went to the fire chief, we personally went there and we said ‘There are people up there, they didn’t make it’. I don’t know, we got really ignored,” she said under oath.

Two bodies were found in the rubble 11 days after the fire.

A tenant testified that she didn’t know the building was on fire, because the alarms didn’t sound and nobody knocked on her door.

“And I was like, three doors from the office,” said Diana Dawkins.