Hundreds still out of their homes after fire destroys multiple buildings in Maple Ridge, B.C.

Hundreds of residents in Maple Ridge, B.C., remain displaced from their homes days after a building at a nearby construction site went up in flames.

The fire on Friday night, which authorities believe began in an apartment building still under construction, burned for roughly 10 hours, according to fire officials.

The fire also tore through houses and apartments on either side of the new residential development, just off Dewdney Trunk Road and 227th Street, according to the city's Fire Chief, Michael Van Dop.

He said no one was injured, although multiple homes were destroyed. Investigators are still looking into what caused the fire.

At least 200 people were forced to flee and they remain out of their homes, Van Dop said. The fire destroyed one neighbouring apartment building and damaged several houses.

Joshua Newcomb escaped from his nearby apartment unit, where he lives with his spouse and children. Newcomb had to shake his family awake — with little time to grab valuables.

"As soon as I saw fire there, I started to panic," he told CBC News on Sunday. "Because it's a construction site, they don't have any sprinkler protection and I knew that could be a huge risk for our building.

"My heart just was racing … I regret not getting some of my things, but I know that I didn't have minutes to spare."  

"There's balls of fire falling from the sky," Newcomb recalled in an interview near the charred remains of one of the gutted buildings. "It was just chaos."

The flames sparked up around midnight Friday. And despite 50 firefighters battling the multi-building blaze overnight, it burned until mid-morning the next day, he said.

The City of Maple Ridge, which opened emergency facilities at Greg Moore Youth Centre to help those who evacuated, called the fire "devastating" in a release.

In a tweet Sunday, City Hall asked people to stay away from the area where several streets remained closed Sunday, adding that the Canadian Red Cross was still assessing the "immediate and long-term supports required by our neighbours" impacted by Friday's fire.

Just before midnight Friday, Maple Ridge resident Chris Diersch said he was awakened by a phone call from his 97-year-old mother, who lives in an apartment building beside the construction site where the fire is believed to have started.

"The sky was bright orange and I realized what was going on," Diersch told CBC News. "And I just threw the phone down and I whipped some pants on … and got out the door as quick as I can."

When he arrived at the scene of the fire, he spent nearly an hour searching for his mother. Eventually he found her under the care of two other residents who offered her a coat and a warm car to sit in.

"They swooped down and picked up mom and took her to safety," he said, "so they're in my phone now with 'Angel' as their last name."

One of the people who helped his mother was Joey Stierle. She told CBC News she saw Diersch's elderly mother with a walker, looking disoriented outside the burning building without a jacket. She was also alone.

"She didn't know what was happening," Stierle said. "She thought maybe it was all fake, like somebody was trying to play a trick on her."

For fellow evacuee Newcomb, that kind of neighbourly assistance will remain in his memories for life.

He said he's grateful to be alive. 

"It's life changing obviously," he said. "You know you can make a better life, rebuild, make it better and you know, we'll get there."