Images posted on social media shortly after noon showed large amounts of smoke and flames coming from the roof of a building near Main and Keefer streets in the city’s Chinatown. One Twitter user reported hearing an explosion from his position in a nearby building on East Georgia Street. Vancouver police tweeted that there was a fire and “multiple explosions” in the 200 block of Keefer Street. “We don’t know what exploded,” said Vancouver Rescue Assistant Chief Dan Nichols. “When the crews were on the scene, apparently, the explosion happened.” Vancouver Fire Chief Karen Fry said in her own post that crews were battling a second-alarm blaze and “hitting it hard” in hopes of keeping it from spreading. Nichols said the fire started in the roof of the building and spread to “empty spaces” between the roof and the roof of the top floor. Crews were seen on the roof working to extinguish hotspots in the early afternoon. The ground floor of the heritage building at 218 Keefer St. it houses the Gain Wah restaurant, while the upper floors are home to single rooms, according to Nichols. He said everyone who was in the building when the fire broke out had been evacuated. The deputy assistant chief told CTV News that 39 people were displaced by the fire, the cause of which is under investigation. Residents of the Downtown Eastside, Gastown and Chinatown have expressed concern about the increasing number of fires in their area of the city. Several devastating blazes have hit the area this year, including one last month that engulfed four buildings on Powell Street near Princess Avenue and displaced dozens of residents. In July, flames tore through a church and forced the evacuation of a neighboring SRO hotel in a fire that police now believe was intentionally set. Vancouver police released surveillance video this week showing three people they believe are connected to the blaze. Before that, in April, two people died in a large fire that destroyed the Winters Hotel, an assisted living building in Gastown. As of June, BC was on pace for a record number of deadly fires in 2022, according to the provincial fire commissioner.
