District of North Vancouver firefighters had a busy day Thursday, responding to three fires, two of which have left families out of home.
The uncommonly flammable day started just after 5 a.m. when a garage fire broke out in a home in the 2800-block of Wembley Drive in Lynn Valley.
The homeowner woke up to the smell of smoke and alerted his family members.
The garage was damaged beyond repair and smoke seeped into much of the rest of the house. Investigators are still working to determine if the home is structurally safe and what may have caused the fire.
"It's probably not a bad idea,
especially if your garage is being used for storage, to have smoke alarms in your garage as well and keep any storage space neat and tidy," said assistant fire chief Mike Cairns.
Just before 7 p.m., crews were again called to Upper Lynn Valley after a steel container full of demolition waste from a housing renovation on Underwood Avenue caught fire. Crews hit the flames with hoses and prevented the fire from spreading to the home under renovation. The cause will likely go down as unknown, Cairns said.
"There's a whole bunch of things in there so it's hard to determine," he said.
Less than an hour later, the trucks were rolling again, this time to the 5600-block of Covey Place in the Grousewoods neighbourhood, where a fire on a second-floor deck had spread to the top floor and roof of a home. One of the upstairs residents tried to
put out the fire with a small extinguisher while multiple neighbours called 9-1-1. "(The damage) is substantial. The top floor is heavily damaged by fire. The roof is damaged by fire. And the main floor and basement suite had a lot of water damage," Cairns said.
The fire appears to have started on a couch on the deck and investigators are looking into whether some nearby candles may have started the fire.
In all, the home had seven residents in two suites.
The families are insured but they will be displaced for "quite a few months" Cairns said.
No one was injured in any of the blazes.
While it's not uncommon for district fire crews to be called out for several emergencies in a day, it's not typical for so many to be fire-related.
"It has happened but it's pretty rare when we get three fires in one day, and two were pretty substantial," Cairns said.
