Fire next door to B.C. pipeline fuel tank facility won’t be investigated

BURNABY, B.C. – The Burnaby Fire Department says it won’t be conducting an investigation into a fire Saturday night a few hundred metres from a Kinder Morgan fuel tank facility in Metro Vancouver.

Assistant Fire Chief Stewart Colbourne says the fire was in a garage or storage area and the building was fully consumed, so the department won’t be able to figure out the cause.

On Saturday, Deputy Chief Dave Samson said the department was called to the blaze in a large equipment storage facility used by a demolition business.

The building is in a property bordering a narrow greenbelt at the edge of the Kinder Morgan facility, where 13 huge tanks hold crude oil and refined products awaiting distribution.

The facility can hold up to 1.6 million barrels of fuel.

Kinder Morgan is planning to expand the site, doubling the number of storage tanks, in preparation for the planned expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline which ends at the facility on the Burrard Inlet.