Fire destroys vacant downtown Windsor Hotel By: Tyler Searle Posted: 11:52 AM CDT Wednesday, Sep. 13, 2023 Last Modified: 10:16 AM CDT Thursday, Sep. 14, 2023 Updates

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A vacant historic hotel in downtown Winnipeg was reduced to rubble Wednesday, after firefighters scrambled to contain an inferno blazing within.

The former Windsor Hotel (187 Garry St.) caught fire around 10:50 a.m. Crews arrived to find heavy black smoke and flames billowing from the rear of the building, Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service platoon chief Brent Cheater said.

“I’m always proud of my guys. We came out here and were presented with a pretty daunting fire in a building that’s highly combustible and it’s old,” he said at the scene.

Firefighters moved immediately to combat the blaze, as Winnipeg Police Service and cadets closed sections of Garry and Fort streets and St. Mary Avenue.

First responders also attended nearby Beacon Hill Lodge, a seniors long-term care complex that was drawing in smoke through its exterior air ducts. Crews ventilated the building’s top floors, temporarily cutting the power and issuing a shelter-in-place order.

Paramedics assessed three patients who were considered high-risk, but reported no injuries, Cheater said.

The platoon chief could not confirm whether anybody was inside the former hotel, because the blaze was too significant for crews to enter on arrival.

“There’s always a chance there could be somebody in there. The building was vacant — it was boarded — so anybody that was in there, shouldn’t be in there,” he said. “I will not put my crews at risk in a vacant building… I don’t want to have to go home to anybody’s family and explain to them why their firefighter partner died as a result.”

By noon, the scene had attracted a crowd of onlookers, watching from the safety of a nearby parking lot. Flames and smoke continued to pour from the windows, with crews dousing the structure from aerial ladders.

Roughly 60 firefighters and paramedics were involved, Cheater said.

Around 12:30 p.m., fire officials moved ground crews further from the building in anticipation of a collapse. Shortly after, there was a loud crash as a portion of the south wall crumbled, raining bricks and debris down on a row of cars parked in an adjacent surface lot.

Given the age, condition and construction materials present in the building, crews expected the collapse and chose not to remove cars from the adjacent lot due to safety concerns, Cheater said.

Other portions of exterior walls crumbled as crews continued to work.

Winnipeg police reported the arrest of one man for repeatedly venturing into the cordoned-off area surrounding the fire.

The blaze was deemed under control by 2:30 p.m., with crews working to extinguish hot spots. WFPS ordered an emergency demolition of what remained of the building.

An investigation into the cause is ongoing, and may be complicated by the significant damage at the scene, Cheater said.

This summer has been exceptionally busy for WFPS, he added, noting firefighters were called to a separate blaze at a seven-unit apartment building on Sherbrook Street shortly before the Windsor Hotel fire.

“Definitely, it’s concerning. There is an issue in this city. There’s a number of factors, I’m not going to speak on all of those, the politicians and my bosses are better suited to that. I’m on the street and this is what we have to deal with.”

Smoke blanketed downtown and surrounding neighbourhoods throughout the afternoon.

At city hall, Coun. Sherri Rollins was leading a property and development committee meeting. “You could feel this heaviness in the air. The smoke was right in the council room,” she said by phone.

The Fort Rouge-East Fort Garry councillor was concerned for both businesses and individuals in her ward which may have been affected by the smoke.

Rollins noted while the cause of the fire was not yet confirmed, she intended to follow-up with officials to ensure the Windsor had been properly secured beforehand.

“A vacant building that leads to squatters and fires is just unacceptable,” she said. “My patience for incidents like this is thin.”

WFPS data show emergency crews have responded to the Windsor Hotel site four times since its provincially enforced closure in March, including one reported fire earlier this month.

Rollins hoped to see rubble cleared from the site quickly, pointing to recent efforts at city hall to expedite clean-up efforts after such demolitions and create stricter penalties for vacant and derelict properties.

Some staff at nearby offices, including the Ricoh building (215 Garry St.), were asked not to come to work due to poor air conditions.

Officials at the downtown campus of Providence University College (280 Main St.) similarly sent students and staff home as a precaution. “Other than the cancellation of classes for the day, no one was adversely affected,” said school president Kent Anderson.

The WPS service centre (245 Smith St.) was closed for the day. Emergency and non-emergency phone lines remained open, and online reporting options were available, police said.

Some nearby businesses were also disrupted by the blaze.

Club 200 (190 Garry St.) opted to stay closed Wednesday.

“The owners decided to take that step. There’s a ton of debris and the street’s closed off,” said employee Dan Doucette, adding the bar hopes to reopen for business Thursday.

Mitzi’s Chicken Finger Restaurant (250 St Mary Ave.) posted a message on Facebook to alert customers it was also closed due to the fire.

The Windsor Hotel, a 113-year-old building where silent film era star Charlie Chaplin once stayed and which later became a jazz and blues music hot spot, was shuttered in March by a provincial health order. Almost two dozen tenants had to be relocated.

The building originally opened in 1903 as a boarding house. It became a hotel in 1910, and took on the Windsor name in 1930.

Chaplin was staying at the then-LeClaire in 1913, when he decided to leave the British theatre company he was touring with and accept an offer from Keystone Studios to go to Hollywood. Chaplin wrote to his brother, telling him about his plans, using hotel stationery.

The Chaplin connection was honoured with a large mural on the side of the building.

A lawyer representing the property owner did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

A review of City of Winnipeg tax records show the property is valued around $1 million.

— with files from Joyanne Pursaga

tyler.searle@freepress.mb.ca