Fire at Vernon apartment building quickly doused

VERNON – If a passerby hadn’t noticed smoke from a small fire burning on the outside wall of a Vernon apartment building Saturday afternoon, it could have turned out much worse.

Vernon Fire Rescue crews were called to the Sundance Suites at 2902 43 Ave. near MacDonald Park around 4:04 p.m., April 11, to a small fire in the wall under the stucco close to the ground.

“It started to flare up a bit so we had to take down a little portion of the wall and do some extensive overhaul to put it out,” Captain Dan Walker says. “It started at ground level… in the joist.”

He says it wasn’t a super big fire, but it was so windy, it could have gotten a lot worse quickly if somebody walking by hadn’t called it in.

The fire was against a laundry room, so no one living in the three-storey apartment building had to be evacuated, he says.

Walker says the cause of the fire is undetermined, although an electrical issue has been ruled out.

The fire inspector will be on the scene Monday to start his investigation.

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To contact the reporter for this story, email Howard Alexander at halexander@infonews.ca or call 250-491-0331. To contact the editor, email mjones@infonews.ca or call 250-718-2724.