Cause and origing of fatal fire undetermined after 3 months. Narges Casnajad and her youngest son Sepehr Koshkoye Delshad, 8, died in the fire at the Mountain Village Garden Apartments complex

Narges Casnajad and her youngest son Sepehr Koshkoye Delshad, 8, died in a fire at the Mountain Village Garden Apartments complex - photo supplied



Residents of a Lynn Valley apartment complex where a fire took the lives of a North Vancouver mother and her eight-year-old son in June may never know what caused the fire to start.


North Vancouver police and fire investigators say they can’t pin down the cause of the June 11 fire that resulted in the deaths of Narges Casnajad and her youngest son Sepehr Koshkoye Delshad at the Mountain Village Garden Apartments at Whiteley Court.


After two months of on-scene investigation, including sifting through “large volumes of fire debris,” interviews with witnesses and examination by structural and electrical engineers, fire investigators have ruled the cause as undetermined.

That’s likely to be unsettling news for residents who still live in the building, where the fire also sent 15 people to hospital and left 14 families – made up of 40 people – homeless.

“If I still lived there and there was no reason for the fire, I wouldn’t feel safe,” said former Mountain Village resident Jacqueline Diamond, who was a friend of Casnajad when both lived in the complex and had young children.

Diamond, who organized a fundraising campaign to help displaced families in the wake of the fire, said she felt “a little bit angry” when she heard the cause couldn’t be determined. “Everybody’s speculating about it.”

Investigators did rule out some possible causes, said fire Chief Brian Hutchinson of District of North Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services. “We know that it wasn’t one of the building systems,” like an electrical problem, he said. “That was ruled out in the early stages.” Arson is also considered unlikely.
  Narges Casnajad and her youngest son Sepehr Koshkoye Delshad, 8, died in a fire at the Mountain Village Garden Apartments complex

Fire investigators also ruled out the possibility of a barbecue on a balcony starting the fire.

Investigators also know where the fire started – outside, in a breezeway that ran between buildings. Beyond that, however, any number of possible causes, including accidental causes, remain possible, said Hutchinson.

Hutchinson added investigators haven’t been able to determine whether smoke alarms were functioning in the apartment where Casnajad and her son died.

Residents in other units reported their smoke alarms went off, alerting them to the fire, he said. There were smoke alarms in the apartment, said Hutchinson, but whether they were working remains unclear because “there was significant fire damage in the suite where the deaths occurred.”

Because the apartment complex was built before 1979, the building code allows smoke alarms in the complex to be battery-operated, rather than wired into the electrical circuits of the building. Landlords are required to inspect the smoke detectors within apartments when the tenancy changes and replace them at least once every 10 years.

Multi-family apartments built after 1979 must have smoke detectors permanently wired into the building.

According to the provincial Office of the Fire Commissioner, statistics show a “strong link between working smoke alarms and reduced fatalities from residential structure fires.”

Diamond said while families displaced by the fire all have some kind of temporary shelter now, many of them are still on a search for permanent homes.



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Overnight apartment fire claims two lives, injures 12 more in North Vancouver
By The Canadian Press
Mon., June 11, 2018



VANCOUVER, CA - 

An apartment fire in North Vancouver has killed two people and sent a dozen to hospital for treatment of various injuries.

The victims were trapped when the blaze tore through one of four buildings in the 170-unit complex around 2:30 a.m. Monday, said Wayne Kennedy, deputy chief with District of North Vancouver Fire and Rescue.

A firefighter works on the scene of an apartment complex fire in North Vancouver, B.C. on Monday, June 11, 2018. An apartment fire in North Vancouver has killed two people and sent a dozen to hospital for treatment of various injuries. (Jonathan Hayward / The Canadian Press)


“One half of the building was fully affected by the fire and the other half was affected by smoke and water,” Kennedy said.

RCMP said in a news release that 17 units in the wooden, two-story complex were extensively damage, leaving about 70 people permanently displaced.

Flames were visible as firefighters pulled up, Kennedy said, but residents from other suites were already rushing to assist people and that was a huge help to crews.


As a precaution, crews evacuated other buildings in the sprawling 4.5-hectare complex and sent more than 100 residents to a nearby reception centre.

Fire crews didn’t immediately realize two people were trapped, Kennedy said.

“There was some mention to us, early on, that there were a couple of people who weren’t accounted for, but due to the intensity of the fire and the amount of units that were involved it wasn’t a safe alternative for us to get into some of the units until we had a better control of the fire.”

Firefighters were able to check the suites several hours later and found both people in the same unit.

The BC Coroners Service confirmed via email that it is in the early stages of an investigation into two deaths.

The victims were from the same family, but their names and ages have not been released, police said.

Mounties added that 12 survivors were treated in several area hospitals for injuries ranging from smoke inhalation to burns.

Most residents were allowed to return to their suites in unaffected parts of the complex within hours.

Crews continued to douse hot spots on the fire Monday, and Kennedy said an assessment of the structural integrity of the building would also be required.

He said it was still unclear what sparked the blaze and work to determine a cause would begin as soon as possible.

An RCMP arson unit, the fire department and the coroners service are all working on the investigation.