Massive fire started in bin for cigarette disposal: chief
Condo building had smoke detectors but no one pulled hallways' alarms
Two days after a fire destroyed much of a Sutherland condominium complex, a woman exited a vehicle in front of the fenced off structure and took in the wreckage.
Chelsea Williamson stood with her mother and her friend Sunday afternoon looking through the metal fence at her unit in the Twin Peaks complex devastated by a fire two nights earlier.
It had been her home for nearly seven years and by Friday night, the renovations in her suite were just about finished. It was then that she heard an alarm outside — one usually heard when someone opens a fire door — and was getting ready to leave.
“Some people started knocking on my windows here, just on my bedroom windows, just to be like get out,” she said in an interview.
Her father went out into the hall and saw smoke, so they dropped everything and ran out, Williamson said. She has yet to find out who alerted her.
Standing outside the condominium with her mother and her best friend, who drove from Edmonton to Saskatoon to support her, she was hopeful to salvage any of her belongings.
“The back and forth is very hard on your heart,” she said.
On Sunday, the faint smell of char was in the air.
Closer to the fire's epicentre, mounds burned building material and residents' belongings were piled on the grounds. Parts of the eavestrough were burned and twisted off the front of the building toward the ground, with sections of the siding visibly melted and the roof gone.
The Saskatoon Fire Department concluded its investigation, with fire Chief Morgan Hackl telling media gathered outside of the firehall in Sutherland that the source was improper disposal of “smoking material” in a container immediately outside of the building.
There was a container placed outside the building to dispose of smoking material, but the container did not have sand or water in it to extinguish still-burning materials.
The container itself was flammable and made of plastic, and was very close to the building, Hackl said. A number of people used the receptacle, the investigation found.
As well, the Saskatoon Fire Department's investigation found that although there were working fire alarms in the building, no one had pulled any of the internal pull stations in the hallways, which would alert people in their suites.
“A lot of the early intervention by the public was actually people on the exterior of the building trying to warn people to get out and also someone within the building moving throughout the hallways and alerting people by yelling,” Hackl said.
According to the fire department, 23 or 24 out of the 26 units were occupied and had someone in them at the time the fire broke out. Investigators also found suites and common spaces did not have sprinklers.
No one was injured in the fire. One person was assessed at the scene, but no one was taken to hospital.
The fire was reported Friday at 11:30 p.m. with responding crews arriving at the scene within twoand-a-half minutes. It took seven hours to get the fire under control and the incident was concluded another seven and a half hours later, Hackl said.
Fire crews were able to prevent the fire from spreading to adjacent buildings, but four vehicles were damaged.
Hackl said when fire catches onto modern building construction materials, such as vinyl siding or oriented strand board with glues, it moves very quickly and burns very hot.
“That's what we had here. An exterior fire on the building, and that went up the vinyl siding and quickly moved in to the open truss space in the roof,” he said.
Crews arrived to find the north and west parts of the building and the roof engulfed in flames. At the scene, firefighters performed five rescues, including of some residents who had mobility issues.
In total, the fire department's response involved 80 members over the duration of more than 14 hours.
On Saturday, property manager Trevor Hanna said in an interview that he was told by fire inspectors that the condominium is beyond salvation.
“It's awful. It's a destroyed building, and a third of it had to come down because it was unsafe,” said Hanna, a co-owner and broker for Saskatoon Real Estate Services.
As of Sunday, the property manager was waiting to meet with the insurance adjuster. The property was secured.
The Salvation Army assisted 12 displaced people with finding hotel accommodations Friday evening, and similarly assisted one more on Saturday night, Maj. Mike Hoeft said in an interview on Sunday.
The cost of the damage is estimated at $5 million.