Fire displaces dozens at complex
A woman was trapped on the second level as fire quickly spread. “The smoke was black and thick behind her as she was sticking her head out the window. I said: ‘You gotta jump, you gotta jump’ ”
A Victoria man ran to escape an explosion of flames and smoke in his Evergreen Terrace townhouse Friday morning and once outside caught his girlfriend who leaped from the second floor.
Victoria firefighters arrived about 3 a.m. and found flames had already ripped through a suite at 829 Hillside Ave., shot through the roof and spread to two neighbouring units.
Dozens of people have been displaced.
The suites are part of a subsidized townhouse complex on Hillside near Blanshard Street.
Patrick Paulin, 41, was sleeping on a couch in the living room when he woke up to discover a fire on the ground floor.
He tried to put it out but became overwhelmed by smoke and ran out the door.
Andrew Meeker was next door and saw Paulin run out, with dark smoke and flames behind him.
The two looked up and saw Paulin’s girlfriend, Wendy Penman, at the second-storey window yelling for help.
Penman was trapped because the fire had spread up the staircase.
“The smoke was black and thick behind her as she was sticking her head out the window,” Meeker said.
“I said: ‘You gotta jump, you gotta jump.’ ”
She hesitated at first but finally jumped into the arms of Meeker and Paulin.
Penman, 42, lived in the home with her two sons, 17-year-old Michael and 13-year-old Cameron, both of whom were staying with friends Friday night.
“Everything is gone,” Paulin said. “All her family stuff.”
Some of the displaced tenants of the 10 townhouses — nine were occupied — were cast into the streets shoeless and in pyjamas.
The victims are being put up at the nearby Sandman Hotel, 2852 Douglas St., for at least three days. It has not been determined where they will go next.
Aidan Edwards, 13, awoke to flames and screamed for his father Tony.
“I was yelling: ‘Dad get in here now.’ I could see out the window the backyard was full of flames,” he said.
“I heard a bang and yelling and screaming, and I got out of the house and heard cops kicking in the back gate.”
Aidan, expressing no concern for his own fate, said he worried about the younger children who live in the units.
“It sucks,” said Aidan. “Those are kids’ houses.”
Nine-year-old Aaron Brooks heard a bang and ran to wake his mother, Naomi Race.
Race looked out the window and saw “flames everywhere.”
“I said: ‘Get up now, we’ve got to get out,’ ” Race said. “There was a lot of smoke we were breathing in.”
Aaron and his 13-year-old brother Justin are emotionally shaken, Race said. The family lives about six doors down from where the fire started.
“We don’t have family, we don’t have friends here, I didn’t know where to go,” Race said.
Brent Palmer of the Mustard Seed said he came across Race, her husband David, and the two children in a nearby Tim Hortons about 5 a.m. after he saw smoke and flames coming from Evergreen Terrace. They didn’t have any shoes on.
The family told him about the fire and he took them to the Mustard Seed where they could put on new clothes.
“This is a devastating impact on them,” Palmer said.
Palmer said he is expecting an influx of people to come to the food bank for assistance throughout the weekend.
“I just feel for these people,” he said.
“They’re in lower-income housing and then to have this happen to them.”
Emergency social services were called in to assist the dozens of displaced people and to help them find housing.
B.C. Housing said vacant units at Evergreen Terrace and other developments will be used to house tenants on a long-term basis.
The Mustard Seed is collecting donations of food, clothing and cash for the fire victims.
Rev. Al Tysick helped transport residents from Tim Hortons to the Mustard Seed.
“This morning it was pretty scary, pretty drastic,” Tysick said.
“People were running out of their homes without their shoes on. I had some in the van and gave them to them.”
Tysick said he’s worried about what will happen to the residents in the weeks to come.
“I think as a community short term, we will respond to this very well,” he said.
“It’s a week from now, two weeks from now that we’re on to another story and it’s Christmas and these people have no place to stay.”