Three people have died as the result of a major fire that broke out in an apartment building in Longueuil early Saturday morning.
The victims were a couple in their 40s and the mother of one of the two, who is believed to have been in her 60s.
Eleven people were injured and transported to hospital. Some of them had been hurt jumping from balconies to escape the flames, said Longueuil police spokesperson Constable Ghislain Vallières.
Several people had to be evacuated from the multi-unit building on Toulouse St., near the corner of Plessis St.
“There was no alarm. I woke up and when I did I opened the door and flames headed toward me. So I closed the door and opened it again and I yelled ‘Go! Leave! There is a fire,” said a young woman who was wrapped in a blanket supplied by the fire department as she stood outside the building surveilling the damage to the place she used to call home.
She said she had to jump out a window to escape the fire.
“There are a lot of problems with this building. There are alarms that go off for no reason. And now, in a serious situation, the alarm didn’t go off,” said the woman who refused to give her name to reporters. She also said her boyfriend suffered third degree burns, including to his face, and was taken to a hospital in Montreal.
Emergency services are at the scene of fatal fire in Longueuil on Saturday February 9, 2019.
Vallières said firefighters requested several buses to handle the number of people who had to scramble from their apartments to escape the flames that appeared to have run throughout the four-floor building. By 9 a.m., it was evident the blaze had spread throughout the entire structure. A payloader was parked at one side of the building prepared to demolish it if the structure threatened to collapse.
Vallières said investigators hoped to be able to enter what remains of the building before it is demolished but that ice and the fragility of the structure made that a difficult task.
“Some police officers have already slipped and fallen but also the building is very fragile. It is also very windy and that helped spread the fire fast,” Vallières said. “We don’t want to risk having another person injured.
The outside walls of the 16-unit residential building were caked in ice, a sign of how quickly water from firefighters’ hoses froze as they worked.
Some firefighters had to call in pickup trucks to help remove their partially frozen hoses because they were unable to roll them up properly.
Michel Hugerot, a division chief with the Longueuil fire department said they received the first call at 1:15 a.m.
“When we arrived the fire was already underway in the basement and the first floor. We evacuated everyone we could and we couldn’t get to the third floor right away and there were people still there,” he said adding the fire likely began much earlier than when they got the first call and that it likely originated in the basement. “The building is a complete loss.”
Hugerot said he didn’t know yet if the building’s alarm system worked.
Emergency services at the scene of fatal fire in Longueuil on Saturday February 9, 2019.
About 80 firefighters were called in to put out the fire.
In October 2016, another major fire destroyed an apartment building, at the corner of Toulouse and Perigny Sts., just a few doors down from the fire that broke out on Saturday. The other building is currently being rebuilt.