Part of the Don Valley Parkway will shut down Thursday evening to allow an abandoned building next to the highway be demolished after it was ravaged by fire overnight Wednesday.
City staff told reporters at a Thursday press conference that northbound lanes of the highway will be inaccessible from the Gardiner Expressway to Dundas Street starting at 7:30 p.m. Thursday. The highway will reopen Friday at 6 a.m.
Toronto Fire Services Chief Jim Jessop said at the press conference the building was so extensively damaged that it needs to be taken down. Demolishing the structure will let crews conduct searches of the building and “continue operations of fire suppression to get to the point of loss stop,” he said.
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Fire crews said they responded to reports of a commercial building on fire at Matilda and Munro streets at around 9:30 p.m. Wednesday. Firefighters arrived and found a “fully involved” fire that was quickly upgraded to a three-alarm blaze, said Toronto fire Capt. Bill Papakonstantinou.
Heavy smoke and flames resulted in the temporary shutdown of the nearby Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway overnight Wednesday as crews battled the blaze. A male in his 30s was taken to the hospital around 9:45 p.m. with non-life-threatening injuries in connection to the fire, Toronto paramedics said. Toronto Police later confirmed the man is a police officer who sustained minor injuries.
Fire was coming out of “every opening” in the building, said Jessop.
Roads, including the highways, reopened around 3 a.m. Thursday, the city said on social media. By 7 a.m., the fire was completely extinguished, but the “structural integrity” of the building is a concern, said Papakonstantinou.
Toronto police told Global News the fire is being treated as suspicious. Jessop said it is too early in the investigation to reach any conclusions about the cause of the fire.
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