The fire at the Meadowbrook apartment complex is now a criminal investigation. Police are looking for a suspect in the blaze that displaced almost 30 people from their homes on New Year's Day.
Firefighters from all four Prince George fire halls were involved in evacuating the 16 units and washing the fire away.
"The fire appears to have originated in a storage locker on the ground floor and we have confirmed it was deliberately set," said fire chief John Lane. "There is significant fire damage to the storage area and ground floor, and smoke damage throughout the building. A small amount of fire damage extended to the suite directly above the fire."
He said the intensity and overall damage by the flames was much smaller than that of the Victoria Towers apartment complex fire in November, and there was less water damage as well from the firefighting efforts, but it was still too soon to tell if the building was as extensively damaged by toxic smoke.
Police said there was no indication of a connection to the Victoria Towers fire, which has not had a cause publicly disclosed.
"It has been handed over for us to investigate [the Meadowbrook incident]," said Prince George RCMP spokesman Cpl. Craig Douglass.
"We are proceeding as a criminal code arson file. We have allocated resources to that investigation and it is underway."
A number of other fires in Prince George over the past half year have been deemed to be either arson or suspicious. Douglass said investigators will investigate the Meadowbrook incident on its own merits and as a comparison case.
"It is just too soon to say if anything looks like a link, but we will certainly be looking for similarities or indications that it might be caused by someone who has caused other fires," he said. "But there is no reason to suspect, at the outset, that it is connected to any other fire."
Twenty-eight people signed up with the emergency response centre established by city officials in the immediate aftermath of the Monday night fire.
Almost all are temporarily housed in local hotels paid for by the province's Provincial Emergency Program, said city spokesman Brad Beckett, who co-ordinates much of the municipality's emergency social services
efforts.
For more extensive coverage of the Meadowbrook apartment fire, read the coming editions of The Citizen.
