A tenant was injured after a pot on a stove caught fire Thursday evening in Maple Ridge, a mishap that triggered the evacuation of the entire apartment building.
The fire started just after 4 p.m. in a second floor suite of Cypress Apartments at 11926 – 222nd Street.
Fire chief Dane Spence said the building manager and other residents managed to extinguish most of the flames by the time firefighters arrived.
The fire appears to have started on the stove.
The pot of oil was dumped in a shopping cart, which was inside the suite, and the tenant tried to smother the fire.
Instead of hosing down the shopping cart and soaking the suite, firefighters knocked on the door of a suite across the hallway and threw the smoking cart over a balcony. The cart landed on a lawn, where it was hosed down.
Fire damage was contained to the second floor suite and did not spread.
However, Spence added, tenants were lucky that the incident happened in the early evening and not when everyone was asleep.
“Had it been 4 a.m., it would have been a very different situation,” said Spence.
The tenant and two other residents were taken to hospital after inhaling smoke.
A series of other calls that came in at the same time tied up crews from Maple Ridge, so the Pitt Meadows Fire Department was called to assist with the evacuation of the apartment building.