No injuries are being reported in a fire at a vacant home on Manitoba Avenue Monday morning.
Fire crews were called to fire at the home in the 300 block of Manitoba Avenue just before 11 a.m.
Heavy smoke and fire forced firefighters to attack the blaze from the outside, the city said in a release later in the day.
Officials say crews also worked to keep the fire from spreading to neighbouring homes.
The fire has since been brought under control but firefighters are expected to remain at the site into the afternoon Monday.
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The house is expected to be a total loss, the city says, and will be demolished.
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One city councillor is trying to take action to improve the situation.
Daniel McIntyre councillor Cindy Gilroy introduced a motion at a recent city hall committee meeting which would shorten the amount of time between when a demolition permit is applied for and when the building can actually be torn down.
Right now, the wait time is about 6 months.
She says one way to do that is lift a requirement for those applying for demolition to have a plan to rebuild.
“We do want that, we want that in lot of areas, but in areas like the inner city that’s really struggling with a lot of its vacant and derelict buildings, we want to get to them faster and have a quicker process to make sure we can tear them down, and remove that debris as fast as we can,” Gilroy said on 680 CJOB’s The Jim Toth Show Monday afternoon.
And if owners don’t take action on their unclean or unsafe properties, Gilroy wants to see stickier fines tacked right on to property tax bills – so they’re harder to evade.
From April 5 – October 31, 2022, WFPS has responded to 62 fires in vacant buildings.
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