Tenants flee the flames by jumping out of windows in Shawinigan

Three buildings were damaged by a fire Tuesday on 4th rue de la Pointe, in Shawinigan. Seven people were taken by ambulance to hospital and one occupant was extricated from a home in a spectacular rescue operation carried out by firefighters.

In total, around ten occupants were evacuated from a building which should have been uninhabited, according to information available to the municipal authorities.

It was a man stuck in one of the apartments on the fourth floor of one of the buildings, where the flames were raging, who was able to be saved thanks to the ladder truck of the Trois-Rivières firefighters. Before firefighters arrived, two other people had to jump from a third-floor balcony to escape the blaze. They suffered injuries and were taken to hospital.

The director of communications for the City of Shawinigan, Frédéric Beaulieu, attended what he describes as spectacular rescue.

When the firefighters arrived (…), the person had managed to smash the window, there was half of his body (outside the window)he says in an interview with End PM. It wasn’t easy for our firefighters, because it was very cramped.

They first tried to access the accommodation with a ladder, without success.

When the ladder truck arrived, we were able to go and rescue the man who was doing really well under the circumstances.

One of the victims also saw people trying to escape the flames by throwing themselves out of windows and down from balconies. I heard everyone screaming, so I went out, and I saw a man fall squarely on the sidewalkindicates Frédéric Cantin, met at the scene of the fire Tuesday afternoon. The man caught in his home on the 4th floor, it took everything for the firefighters to get him out. It was hell.

The flames broke out in this apartment building in the early afternoon, before spreading to an uninhabited neighboring building. A third building was also damaged, on the third floor and the roof, mainly by water and smoke. At the height of the fire, a large plume of smoke was visible some distance from the fire.

The blaze was brought under control by mid-afternoon. Around 3:15 p.m., the flames were contained to the roof of the second building. An investigation is underway to clarify the causes and circumstances behind the fire.

Aging and dilapidated buildings

Frédéric Beaulieu wanted to highlight the work of the firefighters, making it possible to limit the damage, which was still considerable in the three buildings burned.

These buildings were also in the sights of the Shawinigan Fire Safety Department before the blaze broke out, due to their condition. The City was notably awaiting a court injunction for demolition.

We are talking about very aging buildingsspecifies Frédéric Beaulieu We are currently in court trying to get an injunction to demolish the uninhabited building which had already been set on fire.

The apartment building where the flames started was inspected last week, according to the director of communications for the City of Shawinigan.

A report was to be produced in the coming days by our fire departmenthe adds. We were told about an uninhabited building, yet today, seven people were transported by ambulance, a total of ten were evacuated.

There are questions to ask; It’s clear that we would like to shed light on this.

The third damaged building was also recently visited by the Shawinigan Fire Department for an inspection.

A fire nest

For Frédéric Cantin, who occupied a room in the basement of the building where the fire broke out, the state of the premises had left something to be desired for a long time.

I slept in one of the basement apartments, then I went to take my shower on the other side, because the building has been no longer viable for a long time, no longer has hot water, the showers no longer workhe testifies. The toilets don’t work anymore either; People barely have electric heating.

Frédéric Cantin claims that the building had become a rooming house and that the building could have been engulfed in flames several times, had it not been for the intervention of the people who lived there. Electricity is questionablehe says. It often passed close to the fire and it was the people from the block who absolutely made sure that it did not pass through the fire beforehand.

More than 2,500 customers were without power in downtown Shawinigan for several hours due to the fire. As of early Tuesday evening, 1,600 of them were still waiting for recovery.

According to an interview conducted at End PM and with information from Raphaël Brouillette and Julie Grenon