It was a busy Halloween night for the Burnaby Fire Department.
“We had a lot of calls,” assistant fire Chief Graham Lamont told the NOW.
Just after 9 p.m., fire crews were called to the 4500 block of Smith Avenue for a shed and fence fire that scorched the side of a house, damaging soffits, gutters and siding, according to Lamont.
A few hours later, at 12:45 a.m., firefighters were called to the 5700 block of Elsom Avenue for a residential building fire, Lamont said.
At that scene, they found heavy smoke and flames coming out of the back corner of the building.
Crews also responded to more minor calls, like a rubbish fire at a construction site in the 5700 of Portland Street at about 8:55 p.m., and medical calls, like a pepper spraying incident on Pandora Street in North Burnaby at about 10:30 p.m.
“It was a busy night,” Lamont said.
Assistant fire Chief Gavin Summers, who was interviewed at the Smith Avenue shed fire, said the fire department had put extra resources in place in anticipation of a jump in calls on Halloween night.
Summers said he suspected fireworks were to blame for the shed fire because of all the fireworks that had been going off around the neighbourhood.
But preliminary investigations into that fire and the Elsom blaze have so far proved inconclusive, according to Rob Lamoureux, the fire department’s acting chief of fire prevention.
“There were no witnesses,” he said. “Without any eye witnesses or really any kind of physical proof, it’s hard to prove.”
Halloween fireworks are legal in Burnaby but only on private property and only with the permission of the property owner.
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