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Emergency care for fire victims extended
Barnyard BaBy Boom
Monique TaMMinga Times Reporter
Miranda GATHERCOLE/Langley Times
Leigha Timms, 10, cuddles a piglet at Aldor Acres farm on Saturday. The farm was open during the Easter weekend for guests to visit their new baby goats, lambs, chicks, pigs and more.
The provincial government has extended funding for emergency housing for the more than 100 residents displaced by Wednesday’s deadly fire at the Elm building in Langley City. “Because of the exceptional circumstances involving the vulnerable population with complex housing and care needs, Emergency Management BC has extended the emergency social services” for those impacted by the fire at the Elm building from the usual 72 hours to three weeks, announced Justice Minister Shirley Bond on Friday. The senior couple who were rescued from the fire and listed in critical condition last week have been released from hospital. Another elderly man originally in critical condition is doing “much better” and is expected to fully recover, said Jeannette Dagenais, administrator for the Langley Lions Seniors Housing Society. It doesn’t appear there will be any details from police or fire about the elderly man who died in the fire. There are some reports the man was in his 80s and was found by a firefighter on the floor of the hallway very near the second floor suite where the fire started. continued, PAGE 6
No easy answers in wake of fire Putting sprinklers into Langley City’s older buildings will be a complicated and costly endeavour, says mayor Brenda anderson Times Reporter
The fire that tore through the Elm building at Langley’s Rainbow Lodge on Wednesday morning, killing an elderly man and critically injuring three other people was a terrible tragedy, said the City’s mayor. But bringing the six buildings in the aging complex up to modern-day fire codes will be a prohibitively costly endeavour, added Peter Fassbender. The building in which the fire broke out was not equipped with sprinklers, but because the complex for low-income
seniors was built in 1983, it is grandfathered under the new building code and therefore does not require them, he explained. Fassbender was outside the Elm building for much of the day on Wednesday as firefighters from both the City and the Township worked to extinguish the fire that destroyed or damaged up to 40 units in apartment block. As he watched firefighters, paramedics and other emergency service personnel work, Fassbender was particularly moved by the sight of an elderly woman being given oxygen on her balcony while crews battled the fire in the unit next to hers,
“For (the Lions Society) to retrofit those buildings with sprinklers in those buildings would be a huge cost … It’s a significant, significant upgrade that would be required.” And where that funding would come from is another huge question mark. “There may be funding we can be advocating for from other levels of government,” said Fassbender. “Where to find the money is always the challenge. A lot of these societies raise money on their own. “And if you redevelop, where do (residents) go to live? It’s not a small issue by any stretch.”
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because it was too difficult for her to climb down a ladder. “It would have been so scary for her,” he said. “Never mind the rest of us watching. “That just made me stop and think, ‘OK, I’m not just going to say, there are no sprinklers, there’s nothing we can do.’ “That’s true in the short term. In the long term it’s critical for us to look at, ‘Is there anything we can do?’” said Fassbender. “What I’ve asked our building inspector and our fire department to do in light of (Wednesday’s fire) is to look at what options do we have.” There won’t be any easy or inexpensive solutions, he said.
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