Battle with commercial fire in north end a lengthy one due to issues with access
Hamilton firefighters continued to a douse a stubborn blaze late Wednesday at a north-end commercial building that caught fire just before midnight Tuesday.
No one has been reported injured in the blaze at 391 Victoria Ave. N., a multistorey, block-long structure in between Ferrie and Birge streets that was once home to the Ball Packaging plant.
First-arriving firefighters were met with a well-involved fire that had torn through the former factory’s roof, Chief Dave Cunliffe said in a news release, noting the size and “heavy timber” makeup of the building spurred the blaze to be upgraded to a multiple-alarm response.
Following a partial roof collapse, firefighters that had started to extinguish the blaze from inside left the building, Cunliffe said. The fire was then fought with three aerial ladders and a drone capable of thermal imaging.
Firefighters remained on the property as of late Wednesday afternoon. It’s unclear when the scene will be cleared.
“This is a deep-seated stubborn fire that has been difficult to access,” Cunliffe said in a release late Wednesday morning. “The fire continues to aggressively burn in the roof area and firefighters are actively involved in suppression operations.”
Cunliffe added it will take a “long, drawn out process” to extinguish persistent hot spots given the current conditions. Residents and businesses in the area have been advised to keep their windows closed due to billowing smoke.
It remains unclear what caused the blaze.
After sitting vacant through the mid- to late-2000s, the massive swath of industrial land just outside the core — consisting of 7.5 acres between Victoria, Wellington, Ferrie and the train tracks — was purchased by Hamilton real estate entrepreneur Joe Accardi for $5.4 million in 2015, according to property records.
The Spectator reported at the time the purchase marked the biggest piece of downtown land to be sold in recent memory.
Once a bustling tin-can manufacturer that employed hundreds, Accardi said in a 2016 interview that he planned to bring the long-abandoned factory back to life as a shared workspace.
That vision never materialized. In 2019, the property was sold to a storage unit company, Alphabet Self Storage Victoria Inc., for more than $9.3 million, records show.
The Spectator was unable to reach the company for comment Wednesday.