Recent electrical work may have been to blame for a fire that tore through a 1911 building near the Burnaby Art Gallery early Friday morning.
Fire crews were called to the Fairacres carriage house, built in 1911 as part of the Ceperley Estate, shortly after 7 a.m., according to assistant fire Chief Brian Kirk.
On arrival, they found flames showing from the back of the building, which stands right across Deer Lake Parkway from the Burnaby RCMP detachment.
“They were right through the roof by the time they got there,” Kirk said of the flames.
An aggressive attack saved the building from complete destruction, according to the assistant fire Chief.
“That was good, but unfortunately, when you put a lot of water on the fire, it damages just about everything inside, and I know the Scouts had quite a stash of all their equipment in there,” Kirk said.
The Scouts have stored gear in the carriage house for about 40 years, according to current volunteer quartermaster Gordon Tilley.
“Our main service area is Burnaby, but we also support the Lower Mainland,” he said.
He estimates the organization had more than $100,000 worth of equipment in the building at the time of the fire, including camping gear, games, cooking equipment, rope bridges, cargo nets and tools.
Fortunately, 100 pairs of snowshoes, whichare in high demand at this time of year, were spared because they had already been checked out for the weekend.
With a big Scout camp planned in Manning Park in a couple of weeks, however, Tilley said Scout groups will be scrambling to find equipment.
Tilley expects some of the equipment will be salvageable, but he hasn’t yet been allowed into the building to assess the damage.
“Scouts obviously carries insurance, but exactly what that will entail in this building I’ve got no idea right now,” he said.
The blaze appears to have started in a lean-to annex at the back of the heritage building, where the city had been storing grounds and horticultural equipment.
“They did some electrical work, and that’s where the fire started,” Kirk said. “We’re still investigating it, and we’re just trying to determine if that’s the cause or not, but that was our initial place to start.”
Denis Nokony, the city’s assistant director of cultural services, described the old carriage house as “a sweetheart building.”
“It’s a very valuable piece of property, and of course the city, through the heritage commission, has invested significant resources to replace the roof and redo the exterior,” he told the NOW.
Nokony said it was his understanding that city staff had done "some work" in the south side of the building before the fire but did not specify what the work was or when exactly it was done.
Once an investigation into the cause of the fire is complete, the city will inspect the building to determine what repairs are needed, what they would cost and how long they would take, Nokony said.
He said it will then be up to city council to decide whether the building will be restored.
“From my perspective, from a community cultural perspective, I would really hope we could fully restore the building and make it available as a heritage property and useful to the community,” he said.
If the building is restored, staff will re-evaluate what it’s used for, according to Nokony, and look into installing a fire suppression system, like sprinklers.
“It kind of gets your attention when one of these things is on fire,” he said, “and you realize how valuable they are. I mean, we realize how valuable they are, but they’re really really worth taking extra special care of.”
