'Lost their livelihoods': Parksville strip mall fire still under investigation
On Monday, fire investigators were back at the scene of an inferno that destroyed a Parksville strip mall on Nov. 9.
They were looking for a cause of the blaze. However, their efforts were being hampered.
"With all the debris – there's air-handling units, there's shelving, walls that have come down on top of it – so it's not safe to be inside the building," said Parksville Deputy Fire Chief Steven Liedl.
Their early belief remains that the fire started inside one of the building's two restaurants, but so far investigators have had to restrict their clue-finding to outside.
"A little bit too unsafe to just go inside," Liedl said. "The instability of the walls, [we have] to make sure that nothing's going to collapse or debris come down on anybody."
Seven businesses were affected by the blaze, including the Heritage Animal Hospital, where the owners are still trying to figure out how to keep themselves and their seven employees working.
"Fortunately we have full access to our client and patient database because it is web-based, so we are doing our best to provide ongoing veterinary services through the gracious help of all the surrounding veterinary clinics," said hospital manager Adriane Harper.
Some employees of the hospital as well as volunteers remained at the fire scene on Monday hoping to capture Dale, a clinic cat that became spooked during the fire and fled the area.
The cat is believed to have been spotted back at the clinic as well as at a trailer park across the street.
"Our staff has just been amazing and I want to give them a shout-out. They've lost their livelihoods, they don't know if they're going to have jobs and they're out helping our clients and looking for this clinic cat," said hospital co-owner Dr. Heather Hagen.
Customers are still able to email the clinic at info@heritagevet.ca to get medications for their pets as well as any medical records to take animals to other clinics in the interim.
"I don't know what Adriane and I would have done without the [staff] support and the community support and everybody, but our staff has just been amazing," Hagen said.
The scene has been handed over from firefighters to the insurance companies who will have to determine when the remainder of the building will come down.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Parents of infant who died in wrong-way crash on Ontario's Hwy. 401 were in same vehicle
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Three Quebec men from same family father hundreds of children
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
B.C. mayor stripped of budget, barred from committees over Indigenous residential schools book
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Jurors in Trump hush money trial hear recording of pivotal call on plan to buy affair story
Jurors in the hush money trial of Donald Trump heard a recording Thursday of him discussing with his then-lawyer and personal fixer a plan to purchase the silence of a Playboy model who has said she had an affair with the former president.
Captain sentenced to 4 years for criminal negligence in fiery deaths of 34 aboard scuba boat
A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a scuba dive boat captain to four years in custody and three years supervised release for criminal negligence after 34 people died in a fire aboard the vessel.
New scam targets Canada Carbon Rebate recipients
Fake text message and email campaigns trying to get money and information out of unsuspecting Canadian taxpayers have started circulating, just months after the federal government rebranded the carbon tax rebate the Canada Carbon Rebate.
Southern Alberta store broken into by burly black bear
Staff at a small southern Alberta office supply store were shocked to find someone had broken into the business last week, but they were even more confused when they discovered the culprit was a bear.
OPP's mandatory alcohol screening during traffic stops 'not acceptable': CCLA
A spike in impaired driving-related collisions has caused Ontario’s provincial police to begin enforcing mandatory alcohol screening (MAS) at all traffic stops in the Greater Toronto Area -- a move one civil rights group says is ‘not acceptable.’
President Joe Biden calls Japan and India 'xenophobic' nations that do not welcome immigrants
President Joe Biden has called Japan and India “xenophobic” countries that do not welcome immigrants, lumping the two with adversaries China and Russia as he tried to explain their economic circumstances and contrasted the four with the U.S. on immigration.