Toronto’s fire chief says residents currently evacuated from two buildings in the Thorncliffe Park area due to an ongoing fire will remain away from their homes until at least next week.
Fire Chief Jim Jessop told reporters on Wednesday he recognized this message is “hard to hear” but is necessary.
“The building will remain evacuated until further notice,” Jessop said. “We cannot provide a specific timeframe as to when the fire will be extinguished, except to say evacuation will continue at least into next week.”
Jessop went on to say that the decision was made after careful review by an engineering team involved with the effort to extinguish the fire.
The fire started on Nov. 27, with fire crews called to a highrise apartment building at 11 Thorncliffe Park Dr., where they found “light smoke” throughout multiple floors of the building.
It then spread to another adjacent building at 21 Overlea Blvd.
A total of 378 units have been evacuated since the fire broke out as a result of elevated carbon monoxide levels due to what Jessop called “incomplete combustion.” Crews had recorded readings of 850 parts per million, a life-threatening level.
According to Jessop, the fire is found inside a “narrow gap” where both buildings meet and is creating a difficult environment that is keeping firefighters from extinguishing it.
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“The situation has tested every resource Toronto Fire Services has,” he said Wednesday. “This space is so tight — between 25 and 50 mm — that firefighters cannot directly access it. Complicating matters further, this gap contains compressed wood material, which burns slowly, making progress extremely difficult.”
He said following a meeting with engineers and other teams, it was recommended that in order to reach the fire, “significant damage” will occur to units adjoining the wall where it is burning.
“This is necessary to eliminate the fire,” he said. “There will be damage to walls, there will be holes in walls as we try to put our hoses through.”
Jessop added they will need to use garden hose length for extinguishing, as the hoses used by fire crews cannot access the space.
Asked by reporters about the process, Jessop told reporters they have already begun to make access through walls in the buildings in an effort to get water and other extinguishing agents onto the product.
Earlier this week, he had told reporters that while the fire was continuing to spread, it was not generating flames. Thermal imaging cameras weren’t picking up heat signatures.
With the day residents will return still unknown, Toronto Building officials said they have engineers on site to conduct early reviews that would help guide more detailed and thorough evaluations that cannot be completed until firefighting operations conclude.
Kamal Gogna, executive director from Toronto Building and interim chief building officer, said once those operations are complete work will be done to determine a plan for residents to return.
“Based on what we know today, we expect that different parts of the building may need to be, may be available for occupancy at different times,” he said. “Basically using a phased approach.”
He also said the team of engineers will be conducting toxin tests, checking the structure, the fire alarm system, and the life safety systems within the building.
“Until we receive a report from the third-party engineer to say, ‘Yes, the building is occupiable,’ we’re not in a position to provide that clearance,” he added.
Joanna Beaven-Desjardins, the city’s executive director of emergency management, said on Wednesday that 119 hotels are currently occupied with residents from the two buildings, with 173 households served for a total of 370 individuals.
Jessop added that the fire his team is facing is unlike anything he’s seen because of the difficulty reaching it.
“We have never in the history of the Toronto Fire Service experienced a fire like this,” he said. “I have spoken to colleagues across North America over the last number of days and, you know, metro-sized cities, and they have never experienced a fire like this.”
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