Vancouver firefighters battle blaze on the Keefer Rooms in Chinatown

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Practically 40 residents in Vancouver’s Chinatown are out of their houses after a grease fireplace broke out on the Keefer Rooms.

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Firefighters responded to a two-alarm fireplace on the constructing within the 200-block Keefer Road, east of Major, round midday.

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“There have been two fires after we bought on scene — one on the roof, and the opposite different on the kitchen on the bottom ground,” stated performing Assistant Chief Dan Nichols of Vancouver Hearth and Rescue Service.

The hearth broke out on the kitchen of the Acquire Wah restaurant, a neighbourhood fixture since 1981, and went up the vent pipe into the roof.

The four-storey brick constructing additionally homes almost 4 dozen single-room occupancy (SRO) models on the higher ranges.

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Firefighters had been capable of put down the fireplace “pretty rapidly,” stated Nichols. However they’d to verify the fireplace or embers didn’t get into the partitions.

The hearth triggered the constructing’s sprinkler system. There have been no accidents, however 39 individuals have been displaced and briefly relocated.

One Twitter consumer referred to as Sam posted a video and stated there was an explosion earlier than an enormous plume of black smoke went up within the air.

Wendy Pederson, a widely known group advocate, watched from the again alley as flames shot by means of the roof of the constructing.

“Keefer Rooms is on fireplace,” she stated in a video posted on social media. “Everybody heard an enormous explosion. The man there … crawled down from the fireplace escape.”

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At across the similar time because the Keefer Rooms fireplace, firefighters had been additionally battling a blaze at 12 East Hastings Road between Carrall and Columbia Streets. The constructing’s floor ground homes comfort retailer Liberty Market.

There isn’t a phrase but on what brought about the fireplace.

Final month, fires at two separate SRO buildings within the Downtown Eastside close to Powell Road and Princess Avenue caught fireplace, displacing 42 residents in a single and 17 others from their houses. 

Different latest fires included an e-bike battery explosion within the Resort Empress close to Major and Hastings in early June that left one man useless and a fireplace on the Winters Resort in Gastown in April that killed two individuals and displaced 70.