TORONTO -- About 700 residents displaced by a deadly fire that broke out at a Toronto high-rise apartment building about two weeks ago have been told it will be months before they can return to their homes.
On the evening of Nov. 15, emergency crews were called to 250 Gosford Boulevard for a five-alarm blaze.
The strength of the flames and the heavy smoke that filled the building made it challenging for responding firefighters, officials said four days after the fire broke out.
Six people were extracted from the burning building and one of those victims was taken to hospital for treatment. Officials later confirmed that the body of a man had been located on an eighth floor balcony. The cause of death was determined to be smoke inhalation, the Office of the Fire Marshall said.
Officials have said the blaze is believed to have started inside a bedroom of an eighth-floor unit, but have not yet released an exact cause.
Following a meeting with the displaced tenants, Toronto Mayor John Tory said the heat from the fire caused extensive damage to a large portion of the building, making it impossible for residents to return home anytime soon.
“I gave them a very honest update,” he said on Wednesday morning. “It wasn’t one they necessarily wanted to hear but I told them the truth, which is that the work to get the building back to a safe condition is likely going to take months – maybe not the entire building, but a large portion of it will be out of action for months.”
Tory added that a couple of floors of the building were “badly damaged” after the fire spread up one side of the structure “from about the seventh floor and eighth floor where it started up to the 16th floor,” which resulted in “structural concerns.”
“We have to have people going in to make sure that the building, thanks to the heat of the fire, it wasn’t damaged in such a way that it was dangerous so the expectation, between fixing the damage of the fire itself and addressing the structural issues, it’s going to take months as opposed to days or weeks.”
Residents who attended the meeting were “frustrated and emotional,” Tory said.
“Some of them have health needs, there are a couple of pregnant moms in there, so I try to comfort them, I just say ‘look we are there to support them and we are going to make sure the landlord supports them because that is their responsibility,’” he said.
“We are going to be meeting with the landlord later today and hope to make that very clear.”
Residents who have not found permanent residency thus far have been staying at a temporary shelter since they had to flee their homes. The shelter on York University’s campus is slated to close by the end of the weekend.
