A carelessly discarded cigarette appears to have been the cause of an early morning fire in a 72-unit condo complex in the community of Copperfield.
The Calgary Fire Department said the call came in around 3:10 a.m. on Friday to a four-storey complex in the 99 block of Copperstone Park.
When firefighters arrived, the occupants of the building had already begun evacuating and sprinklers on the balcony of the complex had been activated.
Kalpesh Bhatt, who lives in the building, said both the fire alarms and carbon monoxide detectors went off around 3 a.m.
“I looked outside the back door, I realized there was smoke coming out from the apartment upstairs.”
Bhatt said he quickly grabbed his phone, escaped the building and called 911, but firefighters were already on their way.
“A couple of minutes later they arrived and started putting foam, first to contain the fire, and then they brought in the fire tenders and started spraying water.”
Bhatt said it took firefighters about 20 minutes to get the fire under control.
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Luckily firefighters were able to limit the damage to the exterior of the building.
“Around 5:15 a.m. the fire chief gave the go-ahead — he said they checked those two condos that were damaged, there were no CO emissions coming from there and they checked the CO levels of all the condos around and they gave us the clear to let us in again,” said Bhatt.
Following an investigation, CFD said the cause of the fire was a cigarette butt found inside a planter pot that ignited the organic matter inside the pot.
Investigators said the cigarette may have been discarded from a balcony higher up in the condo complex.
They also found multiple cigarette butts on the ground below, “indicating an ongoing issue of improper and unsafe disposal from smokers on upper floors,” according to investigators.
“The only reason many residents weren’t left homeless was the quick actions of a building occupant who noticed the flames and immediately called 9-1-1, and the presence of sprinklers on the balconies that played a critical role in containing the fire and limiting the spread,” said the fire department in a written statement.
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