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Displaced residents of two towers at a Thorncliffe Park highrise are still waiting to hear when they’ll be able to return home, as fire crews continue to battle a complex fire days after the buildings were evacuated.
Insulation within the walls of two connected apartment buildings at Thorncliffe Park Drive and Overlea Boulevard has been burning since Thursday afternoon.
Toronto’s fire chief has called the five-alarm blaze one of the “more complex” the service has ever seen, saying Monday that crews were struggling to access “combustible particle board” inside the walls between the two buildings. There is still no timeline for extinguishing the blaze, let alone getting people back into their apartments, he told reporters.
Many residents are now staying in hotel rooms while they wait for a time frame on when they can return. One of them says residents have been staying in touch through text and email, looking after each other while they wait.
“I’m more than thankful for the community that I live in. Everyone came together in order to support [each other],” May, whom CBC Toronto is only identifying by her first name because she is concerned for her safety should her residence be made public, told CBC Radio’s Metro Morning Monday.
May also works for he Neighbourhood Organization, which is helping co-ordinate support for evacuees during the fire along with Toronto Emergency Management and the Canadian Red Cross. She said they’ve been helping to do wellness checks on residents, many of whom are older.T
“The building does have a lot of people who require additional support,” she said.
She said many residents have also been able to pick up some belongings from their units since the fire started, with shuttle buses arranged from their hotels.
The Canadian Red Cross is supporting 141 households, consisting of 293 residents, with 117 hotel rooms during the fire, Toronto Emergency Management director Joanna Beaven-Desjardins told reporters Monday.
Local councillor Rachel Chernos Lin said the collaboration between city agencies and support groups has been “truly exceptional” as they help residents.
“People are living in a bit of the unknown and waiting for updates, but they’re getting lots of communication,” she told Metro Morning Monday.
“It is unusual. If you were to walk by the building, you wouldn’t know anything is amiss, except the fact that there’s a command station outside,” Chernos Lin said of the fire, which isn’t producing visible flames. “Obviously, [residents] didn’t necessarily expect that this would go on for days, because it’s not the normal trajectory that we think about when we think of a fire.”
Accessing fire a challenge, says fire chief
Speaking to reporters Monday afternoon, Toronto Fire Chief Jim Jessop said crews had located the problem that’s kept the fire burning for days — they just have to figure out a way to get to it.
The material that is burning is “combustible particle board that was placed between an expansion joint” between the two buildings, Jessop said. The material isn’t producing flames and there’s currently no danger of structural damage, he said, but it needs to be put out before people can move back in.
“Think of a cigar that is burning slowly,” he said. “Getting to this is next to impossible for our crews. And we have been trying everything.”
Toronto Fire Chief Jim Jessop says the fire is currently burning a ‘combustible particle board’ that crews are having extreme difficulty accessing. (CBC)
Crews continue to work around the clock as Toronto Fire consults with engineers to find a way to get to the burning material, he said, adding he hadn’t seen a fire like this in his roughly 30-year career.
Toronto Fire is also working on a plan to move people back into the building as soon as possible, so when the fire is out, there will be minimal delay for residents, Jessop said. But he said that will be a minimum of 24 hours after the fire is extinguished.
“I want to thank the residents for their patience,” he said. “I can’t imagine what it would be like to be dislocated and moved from your home in the middle of the night … especially during this time of year.”
Jessop said the cause of the fire is still under investigation.
