Major Fire in Washington Hotel Fills Streets with Spectators on Downtown Eastside

Yesterday a Downtown Eastsider was eating lunch at the Carnegie Center at Main & Hastings when it became obvious there was an emergency nearby.  "I heard siren after siren after siren." The Downtown Eastsider rushed outside and saw fire fighters at the Washington Hotel next to the Balmoral Hotel near Main & Hastings. The air was filled with smoke.  

People poured out of Carnegie Center and the nearby hotels and povertarian organizations and lined the sidewalks near Main & Hastings, to watch the fire fighters.  A crowd also stood on Cordova St. watching the fire from the rear of the Washington.  Flames and smoke were visible in a room with a window facing Cordova St. 

The Downtown Eastsider took a few photos and emailed them to us.  

 

The photo above was taken on Hastings St.  The Washington Hotel is the one with the ladder leaning against it. 

Update:  It has since been revealed that the Washington Hotel fire left 100 people homeless. City Emergency Social Services arrived to help Washington tenants find emergency shelter.

Main & National

Photo taken Wed., Feb. 4/09 at roughly 5:30 p.m.

Province Dupes Readers with Ethel Whitty "Interview"

This is an example of why the mainstream media is going bankrupt.  Media outlets involved in "Operation Pheonix" promised to ask "uncomfortable questions" of those running things on the Downtown Eastside. Instead they have published what amounts to a press release from Carnegie Director Ethel Whitty, with no mention of the fact that she has been accused of everything from slander to fraud. 

Yesterday, Carnegie member Wilf Reimer drew Whitty's interview with the Province newspaper to the attention of the DTES Enquirer.  It's actually not an interview at all.  There is no reporter named in the byline, just "STAFF REPORTER".  There is a formal, 'canned', quality to Whitty's responses which makes it virtually certain that she obtained the questions in advance and was allowed to produce written responses.  A press release.   Perhaps Whitty can no longer risk agreeing to a face-to-face interview where uncomfortable questions could actually be asked.  

In Whitty's press release, she used the buzzword "dignity" when discussing the homeless. Province readers were taken for suckers with this.  

Here's the real story:  Whitty's idea of "dignity" for homeless William Simpson was to deliver him a letter barring him from Carnegie Center after he got elected to the Board last year.  As Simpson stood on the sidewalk outside Carnegie during Board meetings, Whitty wouldn't even allow this elected official the dignity of having input via a cell phone that had been loaned to him.  Then Whitty appeared on CBC to slander this homeless man, but wouldn't appear along with him to allow him the dignity of being able to respond to her accusations.  

In the CBC interview, Whitty attempted to strip this homeless man of his dignity and reputation by announcing that he had been barred from Carnegie for posing a "WorkSafe" risk.  That was the first Simpson had heard of any WorkSafe risk.  No WorkSafe risk was mentioned in the letter Whitty had personally delivered to him, a letter in which he was informed that he was officially barred from Carnegie for operating a website which "features links" to the DTES Enquirer blog. (The blog had reported that Whitty was taking educational and computer funding, while the poor were too often finding the doors to these services locked.) Whitty has never to this day provided Simpson with evidence that he posed a WorkSaferisk, but that didn't stop her from breaching confidentiality by telling the world via CBC.  So much for "dignity".  

Whitty's willingness to falsely present Carnegie members as a risk is not restricted to homeless people.  Any garden variety poor person can become a target.  Like the woman who challenged the fact that she had been barred from a Carnegie facility and a slanderous report written on her for the City Security database, without her version of events being sought.  After challenging the barring, the woman alleges that "15 witnesses" were manufactured against her and entered into the City Security database.  Whitty has not been able to name even one of these witenesses.   

Allegations of fraud against Whitty extend to funding as well.  Whitty has been repeatedly accused of obtaining funding on the condition that it will be used to hire Downtown Eastside residents.  Truth is, it has been used to hire people as far away as Vancouver Island.  The person hired from Vancouver Island was even paid $500 in travel expenses, according to former Carnegie Board member Rachel Davis.

Whitty has a Masters in Social Work.  But the breaches of confidentiality in the CBC interview alone should be enough to get her license to practice social work suspended.  And the Province newspaper should stop passing her off to their readers as a credible commentator on the poor and homeless.     

  

Scottish Bagpipes a Hit at Chinese New Year Parade

Umbrellas lined Pender St. today as spectators watched the Chinese New Year parade inVancouver's Chinatown.

A few of the dragons in the parade wore plastic to keep the rain off their heads.

I thought I heard bagpipes. "Scottish bagpipes for Chinese New Year?"  But I knew that in multi-culti, multi-grant Canada, anything was possible.  

There were other cultures represented in the parade too, from Vietnamese to Haida.

I was looking at the CKNW mascot and then I said, "Hey, that's Christie Clark."  I listen to her talk show sometimes.  

 

The guy in the cap in the above photo was a 'rain on the parade' type of photographer.  The parade was an event made for photographers and there were many bending the rules by going into the street to get a closer shot.  Eventually a parade crowd-control Chinese woman came around with a loud speaker and started moving photographers back toward the yellow line by the sidewalk.  So a bunch of photographers were backing up all at once and the guy with the cap decides to squat on the street and change his camera's memory card.  Then he got angry at another photographer, saying that her umbrella could have poked his eye out. She was carrying a closed umbrella by her side and it didn't have a pointed tip.  That's the first time I've seen a photographer get nasty to another while covering a news event; I've always been amazed at how cordial photographers at these events are toward one another.       

I recognized these musicians, The Carnival Band.  They played at the bandstand next to Science World last November at the party finishing off 'Bike to Work Week'. 

Car Crashes into Street Lamp at Main & National during Rush Hour

It was rush hour, about 4:45 p.m., when two cars were involved in an accident which saw one car collide with a street lamp.  The accident occurred kitty corner to Pacific Station, across from the Ivanhoe Hotel.  

 
This man stood by his car, often gazing at the dent.  But he was calm. 

The street at this corner has been dug up over the past few days; there are signs in the background that contruction work is still underway.  

Firemen in the above photos push the second car involved in the accident to a parking spot around the corner.  

A fire truck, ambulance, and police paddy wagon arrived almost simultaneously, but I didn't get the impression there were serious injuries. 

In the above photo, firemen push the second car involved in the accident to a spot around the corner.

Firemen Took an Hour to Arrive at Incendio Fire a Block Away from Fire Station

DTES Enquirer Photo: Incendio restaurant below rooming house. Alexander St. is on the right.


Incendiary Incendio. A former tenant in the rooming house at 90 Alexander St. above the Incendio restaurant, has questions about the fire on Jan. 6 at 5 a.m. that left all tenants evicted. It took the fire department “about an hour to arrive” – even though there is a fire station just a block away at Main & Powell.

Tenants had evacuated, knowing that this was a real fire. Although it was not unusual for the fire alarm to go off in the building, says a tenant, "This time the sprinkler system went off." One tenant recalls waiting and waiting outside for the firemen. "I was thinking, 'They'll be hear in a minute or two'; then I'd think, "Another minute or two, then they'll be here."

Fire damage in the kitchen of Incendio. Photo from UrbanDiner.ca

It has been pointed out that in an emergency situation, people waiting for help can have a different sense of time; they can feel that things are taking longer than they really are. But even if we take that into account, the reaction time here seems uncharacteristically slow for the Vancouver Fire Department. Any Downtown Eastsider can tell you that if a junkie overdoses on the street or somebody is having a heart attack, the VFD fire trucks often beat police or ambulances to the scene.

Even when firemen did arrive, it seemed to the tenant that they “loafed around”. Firemen tried to force open a door and then they gave up; then they walked over to a fire truck and did something there. There seemed to be “no leadership”, says the tenant. “Nobody was giving orders.” The resident described how frustrating it was to watch these firemen. “It was like, “Put out the fire! It’s over there! We all know where it is!”

Tenants believe it was a little too convenient for the offshore owner that the rooming house burned unchecked for some time before firemen dealt with it. "That's a valuable building", said a former tenant, as if that explained everything. The tenant noted that some of the suites in that building have a “million dollar view” of the harbor. The landlord would have been unable under the law to evict the current lower income tenants and 'go condo' in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. A one bedroom suite with a spectacular view was housing a couple and renting for a mere $850 per month, according to tenants.

Photo: Rooming house over Incendio restaurant at Powell & Columbia St.

Several tenants would like to move back into the rooming house. They've been told that it will be six months before renovations are finished, but they doubt they will ever be allowed to move back in. The fire was allowed to burn long enough that the landlord may be in a position to circumvent laws that curb the practice of evicting lower income tenants, doing renovations -- workmen were there yesterday doing renovations -- and then jacking up the rents. “If there is structural damage and the floors are burned,” says a former tenant, “they can say, “It’s not safe, you have to move out.” Indeed, all tenants were told to move, even though only the suites immediately above the restaurant stove, where the fire is believed to have started, were damaged.
Photo from UrbanDiner.ca

A former tenant is under the impression that after the fire started in the Incendio stove, "it went up the pipes and burned out the suites overhead". But the tenant is convinced that if firemen had arrived promptly, fire damage would have been minimal, and a mass eviction would have been unnecessary.

"Do you think maybe they weren't called right away?", I asked, suddenly catching on to what the tenant had been insinuating. The tenant would say only that there were questions. "I'm trying to let it go", said the tenant, who was a little stressed during our conversation, less than a week after being evicted and scrambling to move into a seedy hotel room on Hastings.

This isn’t the first time, firemen have had to deal with a fire in the Incendio stove. I recall walking a friend home about a year ago and finding the air in that area a bit smoky; there were particles in the air. The next day, my friend told me that the wood stove at Incendio, the one used for cooking pizza, had caught fire. The fireman were able to get the fire contained more quickly that time.

The tenant says of the latest fire. “There are ways to make a fire happen eventually; you can avoid maintaining the stove.”

"But Incendio doesn’t own that building," I said, thinking that they would have nothing to gain from the eviction of tenants. "No, they lease", said the tenant. "They'll get fire insurance. That business wasn't doing very well."

There is no solid evidence of wrongdoing against anybody. Not against the operators of Incendio, not against the offshore owner, not against the fire department who may or may not have been called promptly. It's just that evicted tenants can start thinking along the same lines as fire insurance investigators: “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”