News briefs for Thursday, August 25, 2022

Banning Street is closed to traffic between Notre Dame and Wellington avenues after a fire broke out in a home on the West End street early Thursday morning.

Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service crews raced to the 800 block of Banning Street at 5:40 a.m., where they found heavy smoke and flames jutting from a two-and-a-half-storey multi-family home that was unoccupied at the time.

Crews initially went inside to fight the fire, but had to retreat outside, where they used ladders and hoses to attack it from the exterior. Firefighters got it under control by about 9:30 a.m., but were expected to stay on scene until Thursday afternoon.

The street will reopen once crews complete their work at the scene. People from the neighbouring houses were temporarily evacuated as a precaution, but no one has been reported hurt.

The cause of the fire is not yet known, but the house is considered a complete loss.

A Toronto woman is dead and a man is seriously injured after the motorcycle they were riding north of Brandon rolled Wednesday morning.

Blue Hills RCMP officers and the Rivers Police Service were called to Road 65N, two kilometres west of Provincial Road 270 in the Rural Municipality of Elton, at about 10 a.m.

Officers at the scene determined the motorcycle was travelling east on the road when it lost control and rolled onto its side. RCMP say recent rain had affected the road conditions, which played a role in the crash.

The driver, a 73-year-old man from Toronto, was thrown from the motorcycle and suffered serious but non-life-threatening injuries. The passenger, 79, was taken to hospital where she later died.

Mounties are still investigating. Both victims were wearing helmets.

Winnipeg will host the 2022-2023 Skate Canada Challenge at Seven Oaks Arena (Garden City Community Centre), Skate Canada announced.

The event is set to run from Nov. 30-Dec. 3 and welcome more than 200 junior and senior skaters.

Typically held as a single event, the junior/senior set and pre-novice/novice sets will run separately for the first time, with the latter running in 2023.

Competitors will vie for a chance to compete in the 2023 Canadian Tire National Skating Championships in early January.

 

Manitoba’s COVID-19 death toll has increased by 12 people.

The province’s latest weekly COVID-19 report, from Aug. 14 until last Saturday, showed deaths related to the virus reached 2,105 as of Saturday.

The province also reported a decrease in COVID-19 hospitalizations.

Sixty people were admitted to hospital with the disease in the latest report, compared with 72 in the second week of August.

Eight Manitobans were in intensive care with COVID, compared with 19 the week before. The test positivity rate was 23.9 per cent.

A 15-year-old boy has been charged with second-degree murder, and another youth is being sought in connection with the slaying of a woman in an apartment suite.

Winnipeg police said the teen has also been charged with two counts of aggravated assault.

Police said a Canada-wide warrant has been issued for a second male youth.

Police said the three charges are connected to the slaying of Danielle Dawn Ballantyne, 36, on Monday morning and assaults on two men in the Point Douglas neighbourhood around the same time.

The provincial and federal governments have signed a $37 million funding agreement for long term care.

Federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos and provincial Health Minister Audrey Gordon said the funding will support staffing, infection prevention, and control and renovations and ventilation upgrades at personal care homes in Manitoba.

Manitoba was the final province to sign a Safe Long-Term Care Fund agreement, which requires governments to develop and publish action plans listing specific investments and performance metrics.

The money comes from a $1-billion investment made by Ottawa in the 2020 Fall Economic Statement to support provincial initiatives undertaken in 2021-22, according to the federal government.

 

A missing seven-year-old girl last seen in the West Broadway area on Wednesday night has been found, the Winnipeg Police Service said Thursday afternoon.

One person is in the hospital after a fire in a North End home.

Around 12:30 p.m. on Thursday, the Winnipeg Fire and Paramedic Service responded to reports of a fire at a residence on the 400 block of Pritchard Avenue. When crews arrived, the home was consumed by flames and heavy smoke.

All of the home’s occupants were able to get out of the house, with one person jumping from a second-story window to escape. The fire was declared under control at about 1 p.m.

Paramedics treated two people at the scene, transporting one of them to the hospital in unstable condition.

The cause of the fire is under investigation.