Blaze at 155 Kent St. in London causes “extensive damage” in single 10th floor apartment

Nobody was hurt, but damage inside an apartment on the 10th floor of building in downtown London is said to be extensive from a blaze mostly contained to a single unit.

Emergency services responded to 155 Kent Street just before 3 p.m. Friday afternoon, after police were called with reports of thick black smoke billowing out a window of the apartment building’s east side.

“The fire appears to have been burning for quite some time,” said District Fire Chief Shawn Fitzgerald, who added that the two people living inside the unit weren’t home at the time.

“There was a lot of heat inside the apartment. We requested extra vehicles to come because of the intensity of the fire early on in the event.”

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Fitzgerald said all 14 floors of the building were evacuated; he’s spoken with a woman living inside the apartment who came home from school, while a man living in the unit was returning from travel outside of the city.

“They’re distraught. It’s tough to break information to occupants. But they’re being interviewed right now by the inspector and by the police just to help kind of give as much information as they can about the cause.”

Fire Prevention Officer Jack Burt says crews continue to ventilate the building, but it’ll still be awhile before they can allow people back inside the building because of smoke and hydrogen cyanide.

“There was some smoke extension into other areas, mainly the hallways,” said Burt. “As you can see from the outside here, the fire itself vented out to the exterior of the building, and then burnt up and damaged some windows outside.”

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Burt says the investigation is in it’s early stages, and there’s no damage estimate as of yet.

“I thought it was a test, or it was just a false alarm,” said Jaymin Proulx, who has lived in an apartment on the building’s third floor since 2014. “But then I looked out my window and I noticed everyone standing out here and I saw all the fire trucks and cop cars just lined up on the street, so I came out here.”

“It is pretty scary,” she added. “I feel bad for the people who live inside the unit.”