Downtown fire quickly brought under control
Adiscarded cigarette fanned by strong winds was the likely cause of a fire on the roof of the building at the corner of Frontenac and Dufferin Streets in Sherbrooke on Sunday evening.
According to Claude Langlois, chief of operations with the Sherbrooke fire department, the fire was called in at around 4:20 p.m.
“The fire was already burning on the roof,” Langlois said, explaining that although smoke and flames were plainly visible upon the initial teams’ arrival, the fact that the blaze was limited to the roof made it easier to get things under control. A third alarm was called in, however, and some thirty firefighters responded in total.
By 5 p.m. only small amounts of smoke could be seen from street level as teams continued to pry apart sections of the structure.
Langlois said that there was an estimated $125,000 in damage to the building, again attributed to the fact that the fire was limited to the top. He added that it was fortunate that the building was mostly being renovated, meaning that there were no people displaced by the blaze in the long term. The only active space in the structure is the Bistro Kaapeh on the main floor, although the chief of operations said that he was unaware of the degree to which the fire had impacted the business.
The blaze generated considerable concern among passersby and on social media because of the fact that the building in question is also home to the first of Sherbrooke’s distinctive trompe l’oeil murals.