One woman is dead and a teen has serious burns following an overnight house fire in Tottenham.
The fire broke out at a semi-detached home located at 53 Park Crescent at around midnight.
When crews arrived on scene, flames could be seen coming from the structure. A man and a 15-year-old boy were found outside the residence.
Officials on scene told CP24 that the teen was taken to hospital to be treated for burns.
New Tecumseth Fire Chief Dan Heydon said that the man was also transported to hospital but he could not provide details about the injuries.
According to neighbours, two children and their parents reside in the house and it is believed that the youngest child was not at home at the time of the fire.
The woman who died as a result of the blaze has been identified by neighbours as Krestine Collins.
“We just came outside and the whole house was on fire,” neighbour Kassandra Marconi said. “There were huge flames. They couldn’t get the fire out and we saw the husband standing outside and he was yelling ‘my wife is still in there, please someone get my wife she’s still in there.’”
“It took them a long time to get the fire out and they couldn’t get her out of the house.”
The cause of the fire is not yet known.
An investigator with the Office of the Fire Marshal and an Ontario Provincial Police forensic team are on scene.
Officials told CP24 that heavy equipment will need to be brought in to dismantle part of the home before the cause and origin can be investigated.
“We haven’t been into the structure yet. We’ll be assessing the structure for the integrity before we make any more entry into the structure,” Heydon said.
“We will be working with the OFM throughout the day here, determining how the investigation is going to go forward.”
The fire follows an earlier blaze at a building in Tottenham’s east end on Monday.
“Two back-to-back is fairly unusual for our community,” Heydon said.
“It’s a great reminder to have your home prepared. Make sure you’ve got working smoke alarms and you’ve got an escape plan.”
Heaters to be brought in
It remains unclear what caused the fire, though Jeff Tebby of the OFM told reporters at the scene that there is “no indication of an explosion at all.”
He said that it is too early to say whether there were working smoke detectors in the home but he said that will be examined as part of the investigation.
“We will be looking into whether there were working smoke alarms and why the fire was able to get to such an advanced state before people evacuated,” he said.
Tebby said that heaters will be brought in to aid in the investigation, as the inside of the remnants of the home are likely to be a “block of ice” amid the frigid cold.
