Winters Hotel fire survivors looking for answers, three years on

Survivors of the deadly Winters Fire say they’re still looking for justice and accountability as they remain scattered across housing facilities in Vancouver.

Friday will mark three years since the blaze in the Atira-operated Gastown SRO, which killed two people and left more than 70 displaced.

Former resident Wendy Gaspard says tenants are waiting for closure after the tragedy.

Gaspard says, with no working fire alarms in the building, a friend shaking her awake is the reason she survived the blaze that killed 53-year-old Dennis Guay and 68-year-old Mary Ann Garlow.

She says she just made it out the door into the front of the building when she turned around and saw the roof fully ablaze.

“[They] took a lot of people out the windows from the front. I feel lucky to be alive. And a little bit, I should say, a lot upset at Atira for knowing that there was no fire system there,” she said.

“Had there been fire alarms, probably we would all have woken up sooner and been saved.”

On April 11, 2022, candles left on a bed sparked the flames that burned down the structure. It wasn’t until days later that crews working to demolish the building discovered the bodies of the two who perished.

The heritage building, which was over 100 years old, was operating as an 89-room SRO hotel for long-term tenants.

In January 2024, a coroner’s inquest heard that sprinklers in the building didn’t work because they hadn’t been reset after a smaller fire three days earlier.

A class action lawsuit was certified last year against Atira, as well as BC Housing and other entities involved.

Gaspard says that currently, many of the Winters Hotel’s former tenants are living in another Atira-operated SRO in the Downtown Eastside, but she says this is out of necessity — not choice.

— With files from John Ackermann.