One of the least surprising house fires of the year
Notorious house with front, back yard full of ever-changing piles of crap deemed 'unoccupied' by Chilliwack Fire Department
[*Updated on Dec. 31, 2024 - PJH]
A day after a fire at a notorious single family home at 5660 Tyson Rd. in Chilliwack with the contents of the burned out home's living room on the front lawn, it didn't look much or any worse than it did the day or a year before.
People often call houses such as this one "crack shacks" or "drug houses" if they aren't actually just crawling with illegal squatters. Municipalities across B.C. along with police and fire departments deal with these derelict properties all the time. Most are the result of out-of-town and/or delinquent landlords. Although in a small handful of cases, the landlords are the victims of illegal squatting*.
Back to the present, it was shortly after 8 p.m. on Dec. 27, 2024 when the Chilliwack Fire Department responded to a report of a structure fire at the Tyson Road house. They arrived to an active fire on the top floor of the B.C. box.
"Due to the swift actions of bystanders who immediately alerted the fire department, crews ... were able to quickly and effectively combat the flames, minimizing the damage to the structure," according to the fire department news release issued Dec. 28. "Despite these efforts, the home remains uninhabitable. Thankfully, there were no injuries to either the public or the firefighters."
But then the kicker:
"The house was unoccupied at the time, and no smoke alarms were sounding. This incident serves as a crucial reminder of the importance of functional smoke alarms in ensuring safe evacuation during a fire. We urge everyone to regularly check their smoke alarms to enhance safety in such emergencies."
All of that is important safety information, but it stretches at the margins of truth to suggest the house was "unoccupied." Legally or officially the house might have been unoccupied but for two reasons it's safe to say that's not true: 1. Neighbours saw someone coming and going from the house almost daily. I don't even live on that street but I do go to the Sardis Sports Complex (formerly Twin Rinks) across the street often and frequently I saw one man in particular hauling loads of wood to the front lawn, presumably to make a fire in the fireplace to keep warm because the house had no services; and, 2. There was a fire inside the house, which was presumably not started by cockroaches or spontaneous combustion.
The main problem with residential properties such as this one is bad landlords, of which there is no shortage in the Lower Mainland. They either leave their properties empty in the hopes they can eventually tear down the house, subdivide and develop to make money, or they are just crappy landlords willing to rent to terrible people who scrounge up rent money every month from illegal activity. In either case, neighbours and the taxpaying public are left to foot the bill for municipal bylaw enforcement, police visits to respond to suspected and actual criminal activity, and firefighters putting out fires protecting neighbouring properties.
There are mechanisms to crack down on such landlords but they are bureaucratic and wholly unsatisfying for the rest of the community who are left to deal with these sociopathic landowners.
A decade ago it was particularly bad and several garnered considerable coverage by yours truly and others at the newspapers. Here are three examples from almost 10 years ago:
- Residents near a drug house on the corner of Broadway and First Avenue took to the streets with signs made with sharpies and cardboard. That house was eventually cleaned up and completely renovated.
- That same spring was Rotary Street, maybe the most notorious in a long line of drug houses causing havoc in residential neigbhourhoods. Rotary is a small cul-de-sac with 12 single family homes and an apartment located very close to Chilliwack Senior Secondary School. I was tipped off about the problems at the house by neighbour Debbie Walker and I went to her house several times back then to watch the ongoing gongshow. The day police finally shut it down, May 6, 2015, involved several arrests and other unfortunate souls emerging to the day, scattering around the city like cockroaches swept out of a shed into the sunlight.
This photo below is one of my favourites. There were several unfortunate addicted folks squatting at the Rotary drug house who were occasionally visited by guys, presumably drug dealers. They all knew the neighbours (and yours truly) were watching them. One day a nice SUV pulled up when I was there with my camera on Debbie's porch. This guy got out, headed to the door and gave me the backwards double-bird, which I believe has a high degree of difficulty.
- Sometimes these drug-houses or squat shacks are shut down after the RCMP get warrants regarding criminal activity. Sometimes they end in fires like the one on Tyson on Dec. 27, 2024. Sometimes they end in tragedy. On July 13, 2016, David McKay left a Chilliwack homeless camp and went looking for Mathew McIntyre who he was told raped his girlfriend Cyndie Markel-Rempel. Instead, he found John "Mikey" Anderson asleep on a couch in a drug house on Glenwood Street. McKay then beat the unarmed, defenceless Anderson to death with a Rapid 11 Hammer Tacker. McKay was charged with second degree murder, pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and was sentenced to 14 years in 2018.
(*Note: I know this first hand about a drug bust at a townhouse owned by an innocent landlord who rented to what was thought to be a nice young family but turned out to be, well, not. It even warranted an RCMP news release in 2020 - PJH)
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Paul J. Henderson
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