City firefighters battle series of fires overnight

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This article was published 12/05/2020 (2142 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Two residents of a home on Marjorie Street in the city’s King Edward neighbourhood were taken to hospital after a Tuesday morning fire.

Crews from the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service arrived at nearly 3 a.m., encountering smoke and controlling the fire by about 3:30. Before firefighters had arrived, all residents had self-evacuated.

Elsewhere, a house on Flora Avenue and a house on Alfred Avenue both drew the attention of city firefighters Monday night, the latest homes in the city’s North End to be hit with blazes.

Early Monday morning, nine separate fires had been attended to by the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service in what was deemed a suspicious cluster.

The fires on Flora and Alfred, both of which occurred in the 400 block, are in the vicinity of that cluster, but the city didn’t indicate they were related at all to the earlier fires.

At 7:13 p.m., firefighters arrived at the home on Flora, where they managed to get the fire under control by 7:49 p.m. A search of the house found no occupants, and no injuries were reported.

Shortly after, at 8:28, crews were called to a two-storey, multi-family home on Alfred, where residents had self-evauated already. By 8:52, the fire was deemed under control, and no injuries were reported.

In the West End, a two-storey house on the 100 block of Lipton Street was the site of another evening fire. At 8:26, crews arrived to find smoke coming from the building before declaring the fire under control by 8:51.

All occupants had self-evacuated, and no injuries were reported, the city says.

Each of the Monday evening and Tuesday morning fires is under investigation, and no damage estimates are available, a release sent out Tuesday noted.

There was no indication that those fires were connected, however, the cluster of fires that occurred Monday morning are believed by the WFPS to be suspicious.

“All of these fires occurring in a relatively short span of time in a limited geographic area points to them being suspicious,” the service’s assistant chief of fire prevention and public education Mark Reshaur said Monday of the cluster.