MONTREAL – “What a way to start the new year,” Mariathasan Soosaipillai said forlornly Monday morning, a couple of hours after a fire tore through his brick apartment building in Rosemont.
“I have a lot of food in my fridge that I just bought. I don’t know what I’ll do with it now.”
The 60-year-old Soosaipillai was keeping warm in a bus provided by the fire department.
There were 20 other tenants from the Masson St. apartment building in the bus, including two mothers with young children. Most of them were immigrants from Haiti.
The Montreal police arson squad is investigating the fire, which left at least six of about 35 tenants homeless.
Constable Daniel Lacoursière said the cause of the fire was not known and there were sufficient questions raised by firefighters that warranted further investigation.
Several tenants reported seeing a man fleeing down the stairs of the building just minutes before the fire alarm went off.
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Firefighters were notified at 8:17 a.m. The fire spread quickly from the second floor to the top floor of the building, said Denis Deschamps of the Montreal Fire Department.
However, a couple of tenants said they believe the fire began in a third-floor apartment.
“I woke up after hearing a loud sound,” said Soosaipillai, who works as an aluminum-window assembler.
“A couple of minutes after that, I heard another loud noise, like an explosion, coming from the third floor. I opened my door and saw smoke coming down the stairs at the end of the hallway. Then the fire alarm went off.”
Louis Auguste, a 56-year-old factory worker, said he heard a loud noise, too, just before the fire alarm sounded.
“I hope I’ll be able to go back to my apartment,” he added. “I don’t have any insurance.”
About 50 firefighters were needed to quell the blaze, which was brought under control by 9:15 a.m.
The firefighters then turned their attention to shoring up an exterior side wall that was in danger of collapsing.
They spent most of the morning hammering two-by-fours to the wall.
The building still needed to be reconnected to the power grid.
Six of the apartments were badly damaged by fire.
Apart from tenants from those units, other residents were expected to return to their homes by Monday night, said Geneviève Déry, a spokesperson for the Canadian Red Cross.
The relief organization is providing temporary housing to three people for three days. The other residents left homeless have gone to stay with friends or family, she said.
Abdul, 32, said he was looking at job ads on his computer when he heard the fire alarm just before 8 a.m.
He then ran out of the building in his sandals and had to borrow a pair of shoes from a friend.
“I was hoping to look for work today,” he said, eating an apple in the fire department bus.
“Now I don’t know what I’m going to do. But I’m lucky because I think I’ll be able to go back to my apartment.”
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