A major fire devastated a building under construction in the Plateau-Mont-Royal district of Montreal on Saturday night.
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The fire broke out around 12:20 a.m. in a three-story building under construction.
“The frame was empty, so it spread quickly,” summarized Alain Laflamme, department manager at the Montreal Fire Department (SIM).
The bare wooden structure ignited like a torch in the night, forcing a fifth alarm to go off, the highest on SIM alert level.
Around 110 firefighters and dozens of vehicles were deployed to bring the fire under control.
Firefighters opted for a “defensive” approach, preferring to protect surrounding buildings, Mr Laflamme said.
Since the building was uninhabited, no one was injured in the disaster, the cause of which was unknown as of Sunday morning.
Sign of the importance of the fire, the fire brigade does not lightly trigger a general alarm. How often it had to trigger a fifth alarm in the last year could not be specified by the SIM in the near future.
However, a compilation prepared by the QMI agency makes it possible to track only two fires of this magnitude in 2022, which occurred in mid-May and late June, respectively, in the Village and in Montreal East. In both cases, the flames engulfed buildings that were being renovated.