A woman who survived a fatal fire at a downtown Vancouver hotel that was home to about 80 low-income residents has filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against the building’s owner, its non-profit operator and the city’s fire department.
Plaintiff Jennifer Hansma joined fellow survivors and members of a local housing advocacy group at a news conference on Tuesday, marking the one-year anniversary of the fire that killed two people and displaced dozens of others.
Residents had no warnings about the fire, and no means to fight it, the lawsuit says.
The fire alarm and sprinkler systems did not activate because they had not been serviced following a separate fire three days before the fatal blaze, and when residents looked for extinguishers, “all they could find were empty canisters,” it says….