MONTREAL — A four-year-old girl was declared dead Friday morning following a fire in a basement apartment in Montreal North, fire operations chief Denis Roy said.
“A firefighter just told me they found her under a bed,” Roy added shortly after 8:30 a.m.
“It appears the fire started in the kitchen,” he added.
The girl had been in cardio-respiratory arrest when paramedics rushed her from the scene to hospital shortly after 7 a.m., Urgences Santé spokesperson Stéphane Smith said earlier.
Smith reported no other injuries.
Firefighters got the first alarm at 6:35 a.m., from a three-storey apartment building on Matte St., near Pascale St. That’s three short blocks away from Montreal Fire Station 18.
Smith said the initial call to the ambulance service was received at 6:52 a.m.
Roy said a six-person family had been living in the basement dwelling, two adults and four children, the latter “all very young, including a baby.”
The cause of the fatal blaze is “still to be determined,” he added.
“There was a lot of smoke.”
The fire will be investigated by the Montreal police arson squad, Constable Danny Richer said, “because there was a fatality.”
Comments