PROFILE: Pigs fly at Topley’s Country Grill café
NEWS: Timber report aims to save forestry jobs
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Fire relief underway
Volunteer Houston firefighters battle against an accidental fire that blazed through the roof of a 15-unit apartment building at 11th Street and Copeland Avenue on Wednesday night.
By Andrew Hudson Houston Today
When fire alarms sounded in the Copeland Avenue apartments last Wednesday, Darlene Pye knew she had no time to waste. “I got out with a coat and my purse,” she says. “Everything else went.” The next day, as Pye shopped for new clothes, her friend Laurie Dumont came along to help. “It’s just things that you lost,” said Dumont, who lost all her own things in a trailer fire several years ago. “You can get things back, I told her. We can’t get Darlene back.” Burning for nearly 12 straight hours, Houston Fire Chief Jim Daigneault says the fire that tore through the tar roof of the three-storey
apartment building at Copeland and 11th Street on Wednesday week ranks among largest structural fires Houston has seen. Twenty one people lost their homes. But everyone got out safely thanks to Chris Bailey, who was staying in one of the building’s 15 apartments, and an off-duty police officer who ran into the burning apartment to bang on doors. Bailey says it all started when his third-floor neighbour knocked on his door and asked for help after falling asleep on the couch with a lit cigarette. “When I went in, his whole couch was on fire,” Bailey said. “I went with buckets of water, to try and douse it out at first, but it was too far gone. The roof was starting to catch on fire.” At that point, Bailey
“ “There’s a lot of good people in this town.”
- Rick Irvine
said the third-floor smoke alarm sounded. That’s when Bailey and the RCMP officer started running down the apartment hallways banging on doors and warning residents to flee the building. “He pretty well kicked on every door until every human got out alive,” said Rick Irvine, who was looking after his daughter’s apartment when the fire started. “Some of the pets were lost,” he added. “I had four two-week old kittens and their momma kitty of four years.”
See FIRE on Page 2
Kitimat refinery proposed By Tom Fletcher Black Press
Andrew Hudson/Houston Today
A Victoria businessman is proposing to build a $13-billion oil refinery in Kitimat. David Black, chairman and owner of Black Press, announced Friday he wants to build a “world scale” oil refinery at Kitimat, B.C. Black told a news conference in Vancouver Friday
he is submitting an environmental assessment application to build an oil refinery on behalf of Kitimat Clean Ltd., a company owned by Black. The application to the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office is expected this fall. The proposed refinery would be big enough to process all the diluted bitumen carried by Enbridge’s proposed Northern
Gateway pipeline. Black said he has had extensive discussions with Enbridge and other players in the Canadian oil industry, but none has so far offered to back the project. Black said he will use his own money to finance the proposal through environmental assessment, which he expects to cost several million dollars. See OIL on Page 3