Steve Nelson didn’t see any sign of fire when the alarm went off at noon at the Keefer Rooms.

He looked out the door of his room into the third-floor hallway. No one was fleeing. No one was calling for help. It must’ve been triggered by cigarette smoke or burnt toast, he thought.

The Keefer Rooms was a four-storey brick building built in 1913. Residents of the upper levels had bay windows, painted green, with a view of Keefer Street. The ground level was home to the Gain Wah restaurant, where beautiful pieces of barbecued pork always hung in the window, a comforting sight that drew hungry locals from Chinatown and the nearby Downtown Eastside to stop for an affordable bite.

It was September 2022. It had been a bad year for old buildings in Vancouver, with many fires and even a few deaths. False alarms, however, were common. The Tyee is supported by readers like you Join us and grow independent media in Canada

But the alarm wouldn’t stop ringing, so Nelson and one of his neighbours on the floor stepped out to the fire escape. They spotted people on the roof of the shiny condo building across the alley, a modern addition to the neighbourhood called the Flats, trying to get their attention.

“Your building’s on fire!” they yelled.