Image Credit: Aaron Schulze / CFJC Today

By Dylana Kneeshaw

TWO-ALARM FIRE

Kamloops Fire Rescue investigating cause of vacant building fire in West End

Dec 15, 2023 | 5:30 PM

KAMLOOPS — Fire investigators are looking into the cause of a two-alarm structure fire that broke out Friday morning (Dec. 15) on the city’s West End.

The building located at 91 West Seymour Street was the subject of a safety-related vacancy order last year. However since then, the fire department says the landlord had made the necessary fire protection improvements.

Around 4:30 a.m. Friday morning, passersby in the downtown area called in to report smoke coming from the former housing unit. By 6:00 a.m., it was a fully involved structure fire with visible flames.

Speaking to CFJC crews on scene, Platoon Captain Darryl Damini says it was a tight location to get access to, and crews were set up along West St. Paul Street and West Seymour Street to fight the fire.

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“Upon investigation, we found that the basement of this building behind us was fully involved with fire, so it progressed from there. The building was unoccupied and boarded up. Access was difficult and it ended up burning through the roof before we extinguished it.”

The building is familiar to Kamloops Fire Rescue. In October of last year, Chief Ken Uzeloc had ordered that the 20-unit dwelling needed to be vacated until certain fire safety measures were taken.

Uzeloc says the situation inside the housing unit was an obvious fire hazard.

“Smoke alarms were ripped out, the fire alarm system had been tampered with and deactivated, there was makeshift electrical wiring in place,” describes Uzeloc. “There was lots of hoarding of combustibles, cooking hot plates right on top of piles of clothes and boxes, and the basement was littered with propane tanks and a number of different things right up against the furnaces and the boilers.”

A few months after the order was put in place though, Uzeloc says the fire protection system had been fixed, and the fire department’s order related to that part of building livability was removed.

“The property was currently fenced and boarded as there was more construction, plumbing and building construction that needed to be done before people could go back in,” adds Uzeloc.

No injuries from residents have been reported out of Friday’s incident, and to KFR’s knowledge, the boarded-up building was still vacant.

“Now that the basement is full of water, it’ll take a couple of days for that to go down before we can actually go in and verify that there is nobody in the structure.”

The fire is believed to have started in the basement, but the fire investigation team will be looking into what exactly caused the building to go up in flames.