Nearly one-fifth of the structure fires responded by the Strathcona, Downtown Eastside and Yaletown fire rooms are considered suspicious.
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A fire Monday in a vacant building at 467 Powell St. was one of many believed to have been set on purpose in Gastown and the Downtown Eastside so far this year.
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“It was an empty building, but the crews did a great job and stayed inside the building,” said Karen Fry, chief of Vancouver Fire Services.
“The fire was suspicious.”
And that fire, which will break out in July, is not even included in the numbers that have skyrocketed compared to the last two years.
Through the end of June, Fire Stations #1 (Strathcona), #2 (Downtown Eastside), and #8 (Yaletown) responded to 770 damaging structure or exterior fires.
“That’s about 132 a month,” the chief noted.
To date, the number of structure or outdoor damage fires that those three halls have responded to is 84 more than the first half of last year and 177 more than the first half of 2020.
“For structure fires, approximately 18 percent appear to be suspicious in nature,” the chief said. “I think the difference is that we’ve had some very big fires this year,” he added.
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More numbers related to Gastown and the DTES were not immediately available Monday afternoon.
According to the most recent BC Fire Commissioner annual reportFrom 2019 to 2020, fire-related deaths in British Columbia increased from 27 to 56, an increase of 107 percent. There were another 59 fire-related deaths last year.
“This is a national trend,” the report says.
Most fire-related deaths and injuries occur in people’s homes, and nearly half of them are caused by cooking equipment (664 fires last year, three deaths, 39 injuries) or smoking materials and open flames (653 fires, eight deaths, 44 injuries).
“Conditions in 2021 will likely continue into 2022,” BC Fire Commissioner Brian Bodlonton said in his report.
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In all of 2021, there were 9,166 fires in BC resulting in 180 injuries and 59 deaths.
Going back to the last five years, people over the age of 65 were overrepresented in fire deaths, 30 percent more than other age categories. People over the age of 80 accounted for 12 percent of fire deaths.
“This is particularly significant given that BC Stats (2011) predicts that the 65+ age group will comprise 23.7 percent of the population by 2036, compared to 15 percent in 2010,” the report says. . “Those 80 and older will nearly double to 7.4 percent from 4.2 percent.”
An overwhelming number of all residential structure fires, 84 percent, occurred in buildings no higher than four stories, accounting for 95 percent of deaths and 87 percent of injuries.
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Fatality rates are significantly lower whenever the fires occurred in the presence of sprinkler protection; but when alarms work but sprinklers don’t, injury rates are significantly higher.
“This is likely due to residents attempting to control the fires themselves when the alarms went off,” the report says. “However, mortality rates were lower in structures with working smoke detectors than in structures without a working smoke detector.”
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