Large fire at Vancouver’s Oakridge neighbourhood damages 3 homes: VFRS

Vancouver Fire Rescue Services says a large house fire in Vancouver’s Oakridge neighbourhood Monday afternoon that engulfed one home and damaged two others is under investigation.

Acting Assistant Chief Chris Gill with VFRS says they received reports of a porch on fire near the intersection of Oak St. and 49 Ave. He said first-in crews saw that the house was fully involved in flames.

Gill says two nearby homes also sustained damage but no one was injured during the event.

“We did a primary search and secondary search of the hosts on both sides, and everybody’s accounted for,” he said.

Gill tells CityNews Vancouver that firefighters were on defensive mode — they did not enter the house because “flames were through the roof,” and it took a very long time to distinguish.

“It took us a good hour, hour and a half to finally get enough water down in there,” Gill said. “We were just hitting the flames from the outside. When we first (got here) we didn’t have enough personnel to go into the building.”

The assistant chief says the right side of the house has incurred significant damage to the second-floor bedroom.

Gill says the cause of the fire is still under investigation.

Multiple callers have called into 1130 NewsRadio saying there was a lot of black smoke pluming in the area.

Reports suggest that traffic was backed up on Oak Street both northbound and southbound at 49 Avenue when the fire first started, but it has now been cleared.

Cyclone Taylor Sports, a store near the location of the incident, has flooded because of the fire.

Braeden Sihota, a salesperson at the store, tells 1130 NewsRadio that a drain in a lane behind their store started clogging from the ashes of the fire.

“Our back shop started flooding, because it started seeping through the doors, and it’s been all up in smoke,” Sihota said.

“From back here, our boss had been trying to unclog the drain, but unfortunately after a couple of hours it just can’t be (unclogged).”

Sihota says they are trying to control the situation to the best of their abilities. He says they have a lot of expensive machines in the back of their store that they’re trying to keep dry.

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-With files from Anthony Atanasov.