Landlord charged in fire that hurt 3, was fined in 2015 over same building

Firefighter hurt in blaze given false alarm about baby inside

The owner of a Toronto rooming house fined $14,000 in 2015 for firecode violations has been charged again after a fire in the same building injured a firefighter and two occupants.

Toronto Fire Services was called to the blaze in Little Portugal at 9 a.m. on Oct. 11. Two occupants escaped from a second-floor window with minor injuries, but a firefighter got trapped and was seriously injured, said deputy fire chief Jim Jessop.

The firefighter had gone to the second floor after an occupant of the building said her baby was there. “Unfortunately the baby turned out to be a cat. There was no baby,” said Jessop.

“Because of the advancement of the fire and because of the violations of the fire code, the fire conditions got worse and the firefighter unfortunately became disoriented and trapped and was rescued out the window by one of our ladder crews,” he said.

The injured firefighter received skin grafts for “significant burns,” is still off work and is expected to return sometime in 2017, Jessop said.

The cat escaped on its own, he added.

The fire began in a second-floor bedroom of the rooming house and quickly spread, burning out the entire floor. A report has yet to be released on the cause of the fire, but Jessop said it is not suspicious.

Celia Gilda Gomez, the 72-year-old owner of the rooming house at 31 Alma Ave. has been charged by Toronto Fire Services for alleged firecode violations, including breaches in fire separations, doors that don’t close and latch, uninstalled or unmaintained smoke alarms and a lack of an approved fire-safety plan in the building, according to a Toronto Fire Services news release.

Penalties for fire code violations can cost individuals $50,000 in fines and/or a year in jail. The owner had earlier been charged under the Criminal Code with arson by neglect causing bodily harm, arson by neglect causing damage, criminal negligence causing bodily harm, mischief endangering life and mischief to property under $5,000.

Gomez was previously charged in provincial offences court in 2015 for fire-code violations that resulted in a $14,000 fine. She purchased the house in 2002 for $460,000. The building, now boarded up save for one broken window, sports a pinkand-white fence and was called the Flamingo Inn, said neighbour Ilana Lowes, 30.

It was home to some “wacky characters,” she said, including “one lady with pink hair always running around looking for her cat, Boots.”

The building now sits empty, but old chairs, frozen houseplants, a shopping cart and other detritus still litter the front porch.