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OPINION THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2020
LOCAL NEWS – LOCAL MATTERS.
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HOSPITAL FIRE: Burnaby firefighters had to knock down a fire at Burnaby Hospital Sunday night. The ER was closed for much of Monday.
PHOTO RYAN STELTING
Burnaby Hospital evacuated by ‘suspicious’ fire Cornelia Naylor
cnaylor@burnabynow.com
The Cascade wing of Burnaby Hospital sustained extensive damage during a suspicious fire that forced the evacuation of patients and staff Sunday night and shut down the ER for most of Monday. Firefighters were called to the hospital at 10:14
p.m., according to assistant fire Chief Dave Younger. On arrival, they found heavy smoke billowing from several doors and windows in the six-storey wing off Sunset Street and Ingleton Avenue. “It was quite heavy, soot-filled black smoke,” Younger said. A crowd of people, including some wrapped in
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robes and blankets, had already been evacuated to a glassed-in patio outside,Younger said, but they were too close to the smoke, so crews escorted them to the street. A transit bus driver who happened to be driving by in a bus stopped to offer help and arranged for three more buses to come to the area to shelter patients from the cold and
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intermittent rain. “He wouldn’t give me his name. It was Terry something,”Younger said. “He was a man on the spot and did all the right things.” Inside the hospital, many patients had already been evacuated to the south side by staff, according toYounger. “They took the ball and were running with it be-
fore we got there.They did a beautiful job,” he said. “They had people in all the hallways and shoved into all over the place is what I’m told.” Once power was shut off to the north wing, crews knocked down the blaze “pretty promptly,” but the whole wing sustained “extensive” fire, smoke and water damage, according toYounger.
Younger said the fire was “suspicious” and is under investigation. The second floor of the Cascade building houses the inpatient mental health unit. No patients or staff were injured, Fraser Health said, but 18 patients had to be transferred to other hospitals because of bad air quality caused by the fire.
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