‘I have nothing left’: Residents displaced after fire rips through Gastown heritage building
Yellow caution tape, barricades, Vancouver fire crews and Vancouver police officers remain at the scene of a fire that ripped through a building in Gastown Monday.
Five people have been hospitalized and many more displaced from their homes after flames broke out in the morning.
The building is a four-storey, mixed-use heritage building at Water and Abbott streets.
It contains a number of businesses, a women’s shelter and a single-room-occupancy hotel on the upper floors.
Bettes Boutique at Main and Cordova streets is taking donations of clothes, bedding and other items to help support those who have been forced from their homes.
“That was my home, everything I own in there,” one resident told Global News. “My husband’s ashes, 30 years of my life just gone. I’m absolutely just devastated by it.
“Personally, I’m grieving my belongings because I have nothing left.”
It is believed everyone has been accounted for following the fire but officials said inquiries are still being made.
There is still no word on the cause of the fire.
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