Latest news with #EastHastings
Yahoo
2 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Crews battle fire at vacant building in Vancouver's Strathcona neighbourhood
A fire tore through a vacant building on East Hastings Street in Vancouver's Strathcona neighbourhood Sunday morning, prompting a major firefighting response and a public smoke advisory. Vancouver Fire Rescue Services (VFRS) says crews responded just before 10 a.m. at a vacant building located between Glen Drive and Vernon Drive, which was slated for demolition. "Upon arrival there was heavy smoke showing,… the fire was coming through the windows and starting to make its way through the roof," said Acting Asst. Chief Wesley Abrams. "It was very well involved when crews showed up." The three-storey building, located next to the Pink Pearl Chinese Restaurant, was boarded up and structurally compromised, which made firefighting efforts particularly challenging, Abrams said. Crews spent about four hours putting out the blaze. "The older structure with the heavier timbers, once the fire gets underway, it is very hard to extinguish," he added. Abrams said firefighters escalated the response to a second alarm, bringing in more than 30 firefighters, four ladder trucks, four engines and rescue teams. "There's already been a partial collapse on the ... alley side of the building, and that is a concern for us," Abrams said in an interview. The extent of the fire meant crews were unable to attack the flames from the inside and instead worked to contain the fire from outside the building, he said. No injuries have been reported, says Abrams, but the heavy smoke prompted the evacuation of a nearby building. By late Sunday, conditions had improved enough to allow residents to return home. "Anyone with chronic breathing problems would find them exacerbated by this type of smoke and flames," he said. The City of Vancouver issued a public advisory warning of "heavy smoke in Strathcona," urging people to avoid the area near Hastings and Vernon Drive. The structure was previously used as single-room occupancy (SRO) but sat empty for several years, according to Saul Schwebs, the city's chief building official. He said the city had ordered it vacated over structural concerns. Schwebs confirmed the building is owned by developer Westbank Corp., which has an active rezoning application for the site. He said the owner will bear the cost of demolition. Part of the building's rear has already collapsed, and demolition crews will also be tasked with confirming no one was inside when the fire broke out. "Given the nature of vacant buildings in the city right now, we can't assume that they're vacant," said Schwebs. "We do need to keep that in mind when we're doing this work." By 6:30 p.m., fire officials say the building had been reduced to a pile of rubble and the site was taped off. As part of the demolition process, crews conducted an inspection to ensure no one had been inside at the time of the fire. VFRS confirmed the structure was completely empty. Gilles Cyrenne, who lives on the same block, said he feared his own building was affected when he saw pictures of the fire. "I was really scared," said Cyrenne. "I've got a studio, I've got artwork, I've got my computer … and a huge library." He said the building had been frequented by squatters after it was first vacated a few years ago, but in recent months it had been well secured and appeared to be empty. There is no word yet on the cause of the fire, but it is under investigation.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Fire erupts next to Pink Pearl restaurant in east Vancouver
Firefighters are on the scene of a fire in an abandoned building next to the Pink Pearl restaurant in east Vancouver Sunday. The blaze in the 1100-block of East Hastings at Vernon Avenue — on the outskirts of Chinatown and the Downtown Eastside — is across a parking lot from the popular dining institution. Gord Sidhu, an assistant chief with Vancouver Fire Rescue Services, said crews were called Sunday morning and are working it as a 'defensive fire, with no crews making entry.' 'At this time the fire is not contained,' said Sidhu. 'Traffic is heavily impacted … and there is heavy smoke in the area.' There are no reports of injuries. The fire began in the Vernon Drive Apartments, a derelict rooming house on East Hastings Street. The building has an unknown civic address, said Sidhu. The Pink Pearl first opened in 1981, but was closed for nearly three years after a fire broke out in its electrical room in 2009. More to come … jruttle@ Related Driven by demand for local food, 'on-farm shopping' grows in B.C. Canucks: Who is the real Evander Kane? His former WHL head coach knows the whole story
Yahoo
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
28 Years Later Has An Amazing Music Callback To The Original. Here's How The Song Ended Up in 28 Days Later
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. As you all have probably heard by now, 28 Years Later, which just premiered on the 2025 movie schedule, is an all-around great cinematic experience (even more so in the 4DX format). Like a lot of the critics who saw it before release (including CinemaBlend's Mike Reyes, who gave it a 5-star review), I loved just about everything about the movie, including a great callback to 28 Days Later. If you're wondering if I'm talking about Godspeed You! Black Emperor's 'East Hastings,' then you'd be correct. After hearing the song that first introduced me to one of my favorite bands more than 20 years ago, I started to recall all these stories from the early 2000s about how Danny Boyle was able to get the anti-capitalist Canadian post-rock collective to let him use the track in 28 Days Later's iconic London sequence. If you're not familiar, the story is really cool… If you have a conversation with someone about 28 Days Later, the conversation is going to turn to the scene where Cillian Murphy's Jim is walking through an abandoned London. The scene, which takes place weeks after the zombie apocalypse started in England, was actually the first thing Danny Boyle shot, as he revealed in a June 2025 interview with NME. During the chat, Boyle was asked about the music that inspired his film, and the filmmaker was quick to point out: I remember, because we shot the opening sequence a couple of months before we did the rest of the film, and we put it together and put that track on it, and you just thought it's very rare that you feel, oh God, that it works. I don't care what anybody says about if it works, but very rarely, you feel that. It's easy to see why Boyle would gravitate towards Godspeed You! Black Emperor's 'East Hastings' and became immediately attached to it. The intensity of the track complements the eerie and chaotic tone of the sequence and ramps up the intensity before throwing the audience into the rest of the movie. However, getting the band to sign off on it was no easy task. Considering the personal politics and ideologies of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, both as individuals and as a band, it should be no surprise that the group was reluctant to let Danny Boyle and Fox Searchlight Pictures (now Searchlight Pictures after the Disney acquisition) use the track in 28 Days Later, but the director persisted. During a June 2025 conversation with Soundtrack Extra with Edith Bowman, Boyle said the band was 'quite suspicious about Fox,' the company that owned Searchlight at the time, and rightfully so. However, upon traveling to Newcastle to see the band and have dinner with them, Boyle was able to show them the scene and explain what the movie was about. Though the band eventually signed off on it, they didn't allow the track to show up on the soundtrack, as pointed out in a 2022 Guardian piece on Godspeed's rise in popularity. Just like in 28 Days Later, the use of 'East Hastings' in the final part of 28 Years Later creates an incredible and instantly iconic movie moment that I'll be thinking about for a long time. However, getting permission to use the track this time around was a whole lot easier for Danny Boyle and company. In the NME chat mentioned above, the director revealed that this time around, it was just a simple conversation and request, with Godspeed You! Black Emperor signing off on its use without any trouble. Just don't go buy the 28 Years Later soundtrack expecting to hear the track, as it's once again left off the album release. Though 'East Hastings' isn't on the official 28 Years Later soundtrack, which is one of the best in recent memory, you can find the legendary song on Godspeed You! Black Emperor's classic album, F#A#∞.
CTV News
17-05-2025
- CTV News
Council motion calls for more public washrooms, shelter spaces in Vancouver
Tents line the sidewalk on East Hastings Street as the city works to clear tents from a sprawling homeless encampment in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, on Aug. 9, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
