Langley construction site fire considered ‘suspicious’

The Langley City Fire Rescue Service has announced that a stretch of Fraser Highway near 201 Street in Langley has reopened to traffic after a fire broke out at a construction site around 4 a.m. on Sunday.

Firefighters, along with the Langley RCMP, are still investigating the cause of the fire, which has since been deemed suspicious.

“The fact that it was a building under construction always makes one wonder that,” said Fire Chief Scott Kennedy in an interview with 1130 NewsRadio.

“There are gathering evidence from eyewitnesses and any surveillance in the area.”

Crews say that the fire was difficult to extinguish.
Firefighters decided to tackle it from outside and not to put crews inside the building and expose them to greater risk.

Another challenge was that firefighters were not able to reach the heat sources, as the roof kept them from tackling the actual fire.

“One of the other challenges in fires like this is that as the building starts to fail, roof components are falling down on top of burning material,” Kennedy explained.

“When we are pouring water on the roof material, which is on top of material that is on fire, the water is not able to easily penetrate to that area that’s on fire.”

“Roofs are designed to shed water, and they do a really good job of that.

He says that once a building collapses, the void spaces in between are still burning, even though the fire appears to be out.

“There’s an immense amount of heat in there, so you’ll cool an area, and the fire will appear to go out, and then the heat is allowed to build back up again because you move on. It’s not fully extinguished, and it allows it to grow, and you can see the flame again,” Kennedy explained.

‘It could have been a lot worse’

“It’s a long, slow process, and until you can get water directly onto all those void spaces, there’s a challenge of being able to fully extinguish the fire.”

All in all, he says his crew members did a good job battling the blaze.

“They protected all of those other buildings to minimize the damage, and I don’t want to minimize the fact that there was damage to other buildings, but it could have been a lot worse based on the amount of heat and the exposure,” Kennedy said.

He says that a structural engineer has now been ordered to assess the damage to decide on the next steps together with the building’s owner.

“Crews are working with the building owner, the insurance companies, and the structural engineer to figure out what the next move is for dealing with what’s left of the building.”

With files from Maria Vinca.