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A multi-unit housing complex is a smouldering ruin after it went up in flames early Tuesday morning in Winnipeg’s St. Boniface neighbourhood.
The multiplex on Archibald Street was under construction when the fire began just before 5 a.m.
Neighbours fought the flames with garden hoses before emergency crews arrived, said CBC reporter Meaghan Ketcheson, who was shown video at the scene.
“I woke up, came outside, and the yard was glowing and the building was fully engulfed,” said Terry Edmunds, who lives two houses away.
He woke his family to get them out, knocked on the neighbours’ door to wake them up “and then got garden hoses,” he said.
“It was very hectic, with two dogs and the neighbours and elderly neighbours, trying to get everybody up and awake and moving.”
The building was a three-storey, six-unit complex, and the roof had just been installed on Friday, neighbour Terry Edmunds says. (Meaghan Ketcheson/CBC)
The building was a three-storey, six-unit complex, and the roof had just been installed on Friday, Edmunds said.
The flames reached up to 15 metres above the rooftop at times, and a train held up the arrival of the fire trucks, he said.
“So we got on garden hoses to spray our roofs and property … to start trying to save our houses from burning. The embers were the size of my hand — or two — landing all around us in the yard, the garden sheds, the deck.”
The intense heat from the burning structure vaporized the water soon after Edmunds sprayed it on his stucco siding.
“It was melting our composite deck, the patio furniture, the cushions. [It was] very hot,” he said.
The property immediately next to the construction site has damage throughout the yard.
A gazebo in Gerry Lessard’s yard, next to the fire scene, is blackened and partially melted from the heat. (Meaghan Ketcheson/CBC)
“My woodshed is a total loss, the deck is all burned, the back of my hot tub — everything’s burned,” said Gerry Lessard, who owns the property. “All the furniture is going to be gone.”
His gazebo is blackened and parts of it have drooped like a melted ice-cream cone. Similarly, some vents on the roof of his home are melted.
“It’s going to be a large [insurance] claim,” said Lessard, who has lived there for 37 years.
He also lost 40-year-old cedar trees.
“The heat was just enormous back here. It was quite the event,” he said.
“It’s not a good day.”
Fire crews monitor hot spots Tuesday at what was a three-storey building. (Meaghan Ketcheson/CBC)
CBC News has reached out to the city for information about the fire but has not yet heard back.