Apartment fire displaces 20 residents

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This article was published 13/08/2023 (807 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A three-storey North End apartment burned Sunday, leaving around 20 people displaced and neighbours calling for its demolition.

“Let it go,” Deejay, a resident who declined to give her last name, said Sunday morning during the blaze. “Why waste the water? Just let it go.”

She and Freeman Arsenault stood watching firefighters at work at the corner of Mountain Avenue and Aikins Street. Smoke plumed from the white-brick building.

Beside it, an identical apartment had windows boarded and a fence surrounding its front entrance.

Fires aren’t uncommon at the site, North Enders said.

Two peopled ended up in the hospital after a fire at the same structure in January 2022.

“Put a park right there,” Arsenault said. “Put a youth centre… something productive.”

Firefighters expected to be on site all day, according to a city announcement released Sunday morning. The fire’s cause was undetermined.

An evacuee was treated on-scene by paramedics but wasn’t transported to hospital. A neighbouring home was evacuated as a precaution.

First responders arrived at the site after 7 a.m. Sunday, met by flames and heavy black smoke.

They entered the building to quench the flames but, because of deteriorating conditions, left and resorted to using aerial ladders and hand lines from the outside.

City staff are now helping approximately 20 displaced residents find temporary housing, according to the city’s news release.

A Winnipeg Transit bus provided temporary shelter to evacuees during the fire.

Damage estimates weren’t available Sunday morning, but city crews expected the building to be “a complete loss.”

“I think it’s (a) good (thing),” said Sunny Joshan, who works at a corner store across the street.

Fire and paramedic crews used drones to attack the flames Sunday. Mountain Avenue between Salter and Charles streets closed, as did Aikins Street between College and St. John’s avenues.

The Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service also responded to a fire in a two-storey duplex on Pritchard Avenue Sunday morning. They didn’t find any occupants in the 400 block’s residency and had the blaze under control less than an hour after arriving, at 7:33 a.m.

Damage estimates of the building, and the fire’s cause, weren’t available Sunday.

gabrielle.piche@winnipegfreepress.com