Fire leaves another gap in Hudson Bay’s downtown
No one hurt in fast-moving blaze that levelled commercial building
The owner of a building that burned down Monday night in Hudson Bay says he feels like he’s in a dream.
“It’s hard for it to seem real,” Robin Belhumeur said Tuesday morning, less than 12 hours after watching his downtown property go up in flames.
“It was just shocking how high these flames were and how hot it was and there was a moment when the roof collapsed.”
Belhumeur said one of his friends called him shortly after 9 p.m. on Monday to tell him his building in the heart of Hudson Bay’s commercial hub was on fire. Belhumeur was working in his garage at the time, but rushed to his truck and drove to the scene in the 100 block of Churchill Street.
His 2,400-square-foot building, which he purchased last spring, was subdivided into three commercial stores and a small apartment. Belhumeur said he was relieved to learn that the elderly woman who lived in the apartment got out safely. He said he doesn’t believe anyone else was inside at the time.
“We’re lucky,” he said. “It could have been worse.”
RCMP confirmed Tuesday that no injuries were reported in the fire, but did not release information about what caused it. Belhumeur said he does not know what could have started the blaze.
Belhumeur owns and operates Hudson Bay Tattoo, one of the three businesses in the building. He said everything in the store was destroyed by the fire — a loss he estimated to be between $20,000 and $30,000.
He said he has insurance on the building and his equipment and wants to be back in business as soon as possible, but doesn’t know what the immediate future will hold.
Fifteen-year-old Hope Dennis was driving through downtown Hudson Bay with her grandmother when they saw smoke coming from the Churchill Street building. Dennis stopped the car and her grandmother called 911.
Dennis said she was surprised by how rapidly things happened after that.
“It wasn’t that bad so I thought it would get controlled easily, but then it just quickly escalated. I was worried for the buildings around it,” she said. Firefighters were still battling the blaze when she and her grandmother left the scene around 11 p.m.
Belhumeur said the quick action of Dennis and her grandmother may have saved his elderly tenant.
Belhumeur noted sadly that his business is hardly the first in town to go up in flames.
He grew up in Hudson Bay, about 350 kilometres east of Saskatoon near the Manitoba border, and remembers waking up one day to discover the old Co-op grocery store had burned down.
On another day, the library had gone up in flames and on a separate occasion the bakery was demolished by fire, he said.
“We’ve had a downtown, over the course of my lifetime, that has been on and off devastated by fires,” Belhumeur said.
“The amount of open lots on that block, I guess it’s increased by one. It’s sad for the community.”
Hudson Bay fire Chief Terry Pilon said he was unable to speak about the fire Tuesday morning. Last summer, he spoke with the Star Phoenix about a string of residential fires that claimed six lives over the span of 18 months.
At the time, he said he didn’t know why Hudson Bay was leading the province in fire deaths, but noted that many homes in the community were built in the 1940s and ’50s with wiring that’s not up to today’s building codes. Some are made of rough lumber with wood shavings for insulation, which can make it easy for fires to start abruptly and unexpectedly.
According to an RCMP news release, the provincial Ministry of Government Relations and the RCMP will conduct an investigation of the scene once the fire is fully extinguished.