Stacie Logan said her first clue something wasn’t right was the smell of burning wire.
Logan is the resident manager at an Adelaide Street apartment complex that firefighters evacuated Monday afternoon because of an intense fifth-floor blaze. Logan said as she and her cleaner exited the elevator in the seven-storey complex, they were greeted by one of the unit’s tenants.
“He realized that it was his apartment that was on fire. So he was worried about his (pets) and wanted to open the door, but we said not to open it. I pulled the alarm and here we are,” said Logan, about an hour after the afternoon fire was first reported.
“The cat and the dog are fine and as far as I know no one’s been injured and everybody got out OK.”
The tenant, seen wandering the parking lot and being comforted by friends, one of whom carried a small white dog, said he wasn’t up for being interviewed when asked.
“I’m a wreck,” was all he managed to say.
Logan, who ironically enough is stepping down from her position on Wednesday, said it’s the first major fire she’s had to deal with and she was just glad that everyone either got out or were kept safe by firefighters.
A number of residents on the fifth, sixth and seventh floor, who did not immediately heed the fire alarm warning, were told by firefighters to stay put, as smoke filled the hallways and made it unsafe to attempt an escape.
“This is my good-bye,” I guess, she said. “It’s just shocking. The first thing I thought about was how many tenants were in there. In this building alone there are 116 units and at least two people per apartment. That’s a lot of lives that you wonder if everybody’s going to be OK.”
One resident, who wasn’t home when the fire began, said he was out jogging when he started hearing the sirens and figured something big was up.
“I said, oh, I wonder if it’s my place. Then I got down to Cumberland Street and I could see all the activity and I saw all the smoke and I saw where it was coming from in the building and I said, ‘Oh no, that looks right about where my unit is. I’m glad it wasn’t, but it’s too bad for whoever’s it was,” said Peter Chamandy.
“I was actually kind of freaking out and I started coming faster because I thought it was my building. At first I thought it was (another) building, and then my heart just started pumping. And then of course you start hoping that no one got hurt and everybody’s out. It’s a little scary, for sure.”
Chief John Hay of Thunder Bay Fire and Rescue Service said it’s too early to determine the cause of the fire, which sent smoke billowing from both sides of the complex and drew crowds of onlookers to the Current River neighbourhood.
“It’s a pretty bad,” fire said Hay, the building’s smoke alarm continuing to beep more than an hour after the resident manager pulled it.
“We consider this a high-rise building, even though it’s a little less than eight stories. There are a lot of people in the building. There was a significant fire on the fifth floor. The fire’s been knocked down right now and we’re just checking the whole building thoroughly right now.”
It wasn’t a pretty sight when firefighters arrived on scene.
“The apartment was blacked down with smoke all the way to the floor. There was a significant amount of fire and the smoke had migrated throughout the building. The fire extension was minimized by the fire suppression effort and all the people who got out with the fire alarm managed to get out safely,” he said.
But not everyone got out, he added.
“Those who didn’t pay attention to the fire alarm or weren’t able to get out, we were able to protect them in place. So they were told to stay into the building until we could fight the fire. Going through the building became untenable for them.”
Hay said eight of the city’s nine pumpers were on hand, including the aerial ladder unit. Hay said the apartment unit suffered major smoke, fire and water damage, and he also expects there some smoke danage to other unit in the building.
There was no word on when residents would be allowed back inside the building.
