Firefighters in Nanaimo tackled a fire in a vacant building in the 1000 block of Terminal Avenue this afternoon.
Crews from four fire halls responded to the scene shortly before 2 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 12, and found a fire burning inside the commercial building.
“We got our lines out right away and hit it from the outside, which extinguished the inside, mostly,” said Capt. Earle Ten Have, Nanaimo Fire Rescue. “We got some interior teams in there and found out it was a fairly small fire, so now we’re just venting it – lots of smoke.”
Ten Have said it hadn’t been determined for certain if the fire started from the outside rear of the building, but there appeared to have been no forcible entry to the building and no one was found inside. It was possible someone had lit a fire to try and stay warm and such incidents become more common when the weather turns cold, but there is always a danger of fires catching buildings on fire, even on rainy wet days and regardless of a structure’s type of exterior materials, and there is always the danger of someone being injured by fire. The fire captain said there didn’t appear to be much damage to the interior of the boarded-up building.
No one was inside the building when firefighters arrived and no one was found after firefighters completed two searches of its interior.
READ ALSO: High school band room scorched in fire at Nanaimo’s Wellington Secondary
chris.bush@nanaimobulletin.com
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