The Port Alberni Fire Department is reporting a big jump in structure fires last year.
While overall calls were down slightly from their record year in 2018, there were 44 structure fires, up almost 30% from the 34 fires they battled the previous year.
Fire Chief Mike Owens said a fire on Margaret Street in March stands out for him.
“It was a prolonged event that took us about 8 hours to extinguish on a building that had been flagged as a potential problem building,” he said.
Owens said a house fire on 10th Avenue where one person was burned also stands out as one of the more serious fires of 2019.
He said they’ll be looking at increasing public fire-safety education campaigns this year.
“We’ll be looking with our Chief Fire Prevention Officer to see if there are trends that occured with those structure fires, and what we can do to curb those trends in 2020.”
Calls to motor vehicle incidents were also up slightly from 159 to 173, and medicals were down from 872 to 832.
