Port Metro fire ruled accidental
Officials don’t know cause, but say it’s nothing of a suspicious nature
The Vancouver fire department has concluded the Port Metro Vancouver container fire last month was accidental, but investigators still don’t know the cause.
A spokesman for the department, Capt. Brian Hutchinson, said “it is undetermined if the fire was a result of product, packaging, or handling failure within the secured container.”
The fire burned through a container filled with trichloroisocyanuric acid — a caustic bleaching agent — on March 4. Residents in nearby neighbourhoods were told to stay indoors because of the toxic smoke.
The container was packed with chlorine-based pool cleaning products called pool pucks, which had come from China and were waiting to be loaded onto a train bound for Eastern Canada. Hutchinson said investigators determined the pool pucks were stabilized in packaging, but they don’t know what they reacted with that caused a fire to break out in the container.
“In heavy seas, did water get into the container and contaminate the product? Or did something happen when the product was being loaded or off-loaded. Did the container spill open and come into contact with a residual petroleum product that was on the floor or in the wood from a previous product in there? We know how it was packaged ... and there was no sign of tampering,” he said.
“That’s why it’s ruled accidental. Nobody went into that container. It had all of the custom seals still in place. It’s nothing of a suspicious nature.”
The white smoke that blanketed much of east Vancouver and part of Burnaby led to health warnings and led to 15 people being treated for smoke inhalation in emergency rooms.
Lessons learned from the incident reinforced the need for authorities to have solid plans for communications and cooperation among responding agencies, Hutchinson said.
He said the full 14-page report on the fire is not being released to the public.