Heavy smoke coming from the back of an empty building at the corner of Second Avenue and Argyle Street caused consternation in a Port Alberni commercial district Wednesday night (May 12).
The building sits across from a small restaurant and bakery, and is kitty-corner to a building that was once on the city’s nuisance building list—the Carlson Building.
“Crews have knocked down on a fire that seems to have originated on the second-storey of this semi-attached garage. When we arrived on scene there was substantial smoke coming out of the front and back of the building and the vent openings,” Port Alberni Fire Dept. Chief Mike Owens said.
Owens said while there seemed to be personal effects in the building, there didn’t appear to be any people inside. The garage was boarded up and firefighters had to break their way into the building.
The fire was quickly under control once fire crews were able to enter the building with hoses. A fire inspector was on scene once everything was under control.
The garage is semi-attached to an empty multi-storey building that faces Argyle Street. The structure is across Second Avenue from the scene of a fire that took down a 12,500-square-foot commercial building in February 2014. That lot is empty now.
READ MORE: Commercial building razed in uptown Port Alberni
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