Sad Irony: Fire in Gastown Turns On Incendio

A few readers alerted us to a major fire in Gastown this morning, and we just received a note from restaurateur Sean Heather (of the Irish Heather):

Heads up…..5 engine fire in apartments above Incendio and Canvas. Difficult to breath air in Gastown right now. Water and smoke damage to Incendio is of shut down proportion.

That puts it at 103 Columbia at Gore. Bummer.

Update from News 1130:

Crews are on the scene of a three alarm fire in Gastown at this hour. At least 20 people have been cleared from a building on Alexander Street near Columbia, which has a restaurant on the ground floor and several apartments above.

Witnesses say it appears the fire started on the ground floor inside the Incendio Pizzeria.  Firefighters are still  looking for potential hotspots.

There’s no word on a cause of the fire, or if anyone has been injured.

Vancouver Police have now closed Alexander between Main and Carrall Street,  as well as Cordova between Main and Columbia.

—————————————————————

Andrew Morrison is a west coast boy who studied history and classics at the Universities of Cape Town and Toronto after an adolescence spent riding skateboards and working in restaurants. He is the editor of Scout Magazine, the weekly food and restaurant columnist for the Westender newspaper, and a contributor to Vancouver and Western Living magazines.

—————————————————————

Scout Intelligence Briefs #138

Daniel Boulud and the great Sirio Maccioni, circa 1987.

Brazil to reduce deforestation by 70%. Is that because only 30% is left?

Obama rolls out his national security team. Clinton at SecState. A thousand skeletons in a hundred closets rejoice.

Gawker asks if you’re a douchebag.

Behold, the Blackberry Storm.

Gordon Ramsay and his alleged several affairs.

Vanity Fair does Tina Fey.

It’s “official”, the US is in a recession. It’s always inspiring when The National Bureau of Economic Research is the last to know.

What will West Vancouverites drive now?

George Bush: “I think I was unprepared for war.” No shit.

Cranky drunk genius Hitch on why India is the West’s “most important ally”.

Is Obama’s first problem US war crimes?

The Vancouver Sun gets a new website.

How long until Venice goes Atlantis on us?

Memo to Sarah Palin: It’s over.

Brian Burke era begins in Hogtown.

Cry, The Beloved Zim. The country I once knew is no more.

The future of Buy Nothing Day.

I want to see Food Fight.

Yup, Iraq is still a mess.

Severed Foot Mystery Deepens With 7th Discovery

The Canadian Press (and, like, every other news organisation in the known universe) is reporting that another severed foot has been found – egads, the 7th in the pac-norwest in 15 months! – this time sitting on a rock on a south arm bank of the Fraser River by a woman walking her dog. CTV hits us up with the gruesome context:

The first foot was found on Jedidiah Island, in the strait that divides Vancouver Island from the mainland. It was a right foot inside a Campus-brand men’s size 12 running shoe that was mainly distributed in India.

Six days later, another right foot — inside a man’s size 12 Reebok running shoe — washed ashore on Gabriola Island.

A third — a right foot in a Nike sneaker — was found in the area on Feb. 8 on the east side of Valdez Island.

The fourth and fifth feet were both found near the Fraser River.

The fourth came ashore on Kirkland Island on May 22 and was the only one of the five that came from a woman’s body. It was found in a New Balance running shoe.

The fifth, a size 10 left foot, was located a kilometre away on June 16. It was later determined to be a match to the foot found months earlier on Valdez Island.

Then, on August 3, a newspaper in Washington State reported that a running shoe, containing bones and flesh had been found at a Strait of Juan de Fuca beach, just south of the U.S-Canada border, about 40 kilometres west of Port Angeles.

So do we have a serial killer on the loose or are these sneakered feet the result of what forensic nerds call “natural disarticulation”? From the Globe a few minutes ago:

DNA testing linked one foot to a depressed man who disappeared in 2007 but the other remains have not been identified.

Authorities believe none of the feet was cut off.

They say it appears all the remains were “naturally disarticulated” from their bodies, fitting with expert theories that when a human body is submerged in the ocean, main parts like arms, legs, hands, feet and the head are usually what come off first.

With that, I think they’re inferring the feet came from people who either died accidentally at sea or up river or committed suicide at sea or up river. After one discovery last May near Campbell River, there was hope that some of the feet had come from the victims of a February 2005 plane crash near Quadra Island which had claimed the lives of five men (four of the bodies were never discovered), but it turned out to be a hoax (a dog’s paw stuffed in a sock inside the shoe – sick).

The whole thing is shudder-inducing. Whatever the answer to the mystery is, it makes you wonder why people are still walking their dogs and going hiking…