Royal City residents have been busy sorting donations, answering phones and reaching out to victims of last week's tragic apartment fire on Ash Street.
About 36 people were living in 31 suites in the building at 404 Ash St., which was gutted by fire on Jan. 31. In the days that followed, community members set up a trust fund to help victims and swamped local organizations with donations to help those who were displaced by the fire.
"I am under a snow of generosity and love. It's been just fantastic," said the Reverend Emilie Smith at St. Barnabas Church. "We are just overwhelmed."
The Salvation Army and Shiloh Sixth Avenue United Church, as well as a number of businesses, were also accepting donations. Emergency Support Services provided tenants of the building with a list of places to contact for assistance.
Shiloh Sixth Avenue United Church sent some of its donations to St. Barnabas, as it needed the space for the Hospitality Project and the food bank. Volunteers at St. Barnabas held a giant sort-a-thon on Wednesday to organize the donations and sent reams of clothing to the Salvation Army for distribution to the folks who were impacted by the fire.
"We are overwhelmed with the generosity and support New Westminster has given the fire victims," said Roxee Forrest, an associate warden at St. Barnabas. "We have no more room. Our hall is absolutely jammed."
St. Barnabas Church will be holding a sale on Saturday, Feb. 22 from 9 to 3 p.m. to sell items that aren't needed by the fire victims. All proceeds will go to the trust fund that's been established to help victims.
People are asked to bring a recyclable shopping bag, of any size, which they can fill for $2. They will also be able to buy a hot dog and pop or hot chocolate for $2.
Smith said an "enormous volcano" has already been transported to the Salvation Army, which is distributing the items to fire victims. Until the sale, St. Barnabas is using the church for some of its programs because there's no room in the hall because of the volume of donations.
"I just think New Westminster is the most wonderful place on the planet," Smith said. We had to turn people away. Our phone machine is full. We have literally had hundreds and hundreds of people calling."
In addition to clothing, community members have donated items such as bedding, blankets, microwave ovens and televisions to help tenants rebuild their lives following the fire.
"There are some things that are not so replaceable," said New Westminster MLA Judy Darcy, who visited the fire scene. "One man, who broke my heart, said, 'My (false) teeth are in there.'"
Darcy's constituency office has been busy assisting in the aftermath of the Jan. 31 fire by working with all of the agencies assisting people impacted by the fire.
"One of the main things people come here for is that they have lost all of their ID. It's very complicated to reconstruct. They have nothing. To get a health card replaced, you need X and Y. We work with them on that," she said. "Often they don't have any idea how to start, and there is a multiplicity of places you need to go. It is pretty overwhelming. We work with them on that. We put pressure on to try and expedite things."
The MLA's office has also been working with other agencies that are helping the tenants and referring people to the various resources available to them. While the priority is to help people immediately, Darcy said she's also talking to city council and her colleagues in Victoria about steps that can be taken to prevent these sorts of situations from occurring in the future or ensuring people don't lose everything if a fire occurs.
"It's only because of the heroism of people in that building and the fire department working so quickly to rescue everybody that people weren't injured and nobody lost their life, and that the other buildings didn't catch fire," she said.
On Feb. 3, Coun. Chuck Puchmayr presented council with a notice of motion that would see the City of New Westminster urging the federal and provincial governments to make money available to retrofit older buildings with sprinkler systems, and to seek support from other municipal governments and groups like the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and Union of B.C. Municipalities.
Darcy said it's important to maintain the city's stock of affordable rental housing, but would like to find ways to ensure it's safe.
"We have an incredibly high percentage of people in the city who live in rental housing. Very, very high. We don't want to damage that. I think a provincial/federal fund that encourages people, and gives them financial incentives to upgrade the fire standards is one of the things to explore," she said. "I am going to try and work with my colleagues to figure out what else is there? We are all searching for solutions that help make people safer in the future."
Darcy would also like to explore whether it's possible to have landlord insurance that covers renters.
"It's exploratory," she said of the concept. "Very few low income renters take out their own fire insurance because they can't afford it."
According to Puchmayr, staff informed him New Westminster has 364 wood-frame apartment buildings, with 64 per cent being built between 1950 and 1970. All new multi-family buildings constructed since 1991 require the installation of a fire sprinkler system as per the city's bylaws.
"That's the type of buildings we have everywhere. It concerns me. It has concerned me for some time," said Mayor Wayne Wright. "They are good buildings. They are structurally sound. The one problem they do have is the wood dries out. We will be looking at this pretty carefully, quite frankly."
