Officials have completed scouring the rubble, and they say nobody is unaccounted for, after the Old Montreal fire that’s claimed the lives of two people and has a third in critical condition in hospital.
The suspicious fire that broke out in the early hours of Friday morning — around 2:40 a.m. — was brought under control between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. Saturday, Montreal’s Service de sécurité incendie de Montréal (SIM) announced.
The blaze is now being considered a “crime scene,” says Alain Vaillancourt, the Montreal executive committee member responsible for public security.
“It’s been handed over to our investigators at the SPVM,” Vaillancourt told reporters Saturday afternoon. “All the resources are on the case to find out the person who set fire to the building.
“I want to reassure everyone that we are doing everything possible to find (who) started the fire and ultimately is responsible for the two deaths.”
The century-old, three-storey building on Notre-Dame Street East, near Bonsecours Street, is owned by Emile Benamour, the same owner of the the heritage building that caught fire and killed seven in March 2023.
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Quebec Public Security Minister François Bonnardel has put in a request for both deadly fires to be combined within the same coroner’s inquest.
“So we will see in the next weeks, in the next days, if it’s possible to combine these two inquiries concerning these two tragedies,” Bonnardel said.
“It’s going to be more rapid to have a conclusion concerning these two events.”
On Saturday morning, some 15 firefighters were still on the scene of the blaze. “They’re doing checks of the entire burned building, and if ever there are small fires to put out, they’ll put them out, and they’re securing the premises,” said SIM spokesperson George Bele.
The fire claimed two lives, confirmed Montreal police (SPVM), which is in charge of the investigation.
The bodies were recovered from the rubble on Friday evening, the SPVM said. The identity and gender of the victims are unknown and the investigation is continuing, said Manuel Couture, spokesperson for the police force.
Several people escaped unharmed from the building, which houses a restaurant on the first floor and a 19-room hotel on the second and third floors. The Red Cross was on the scene to offer assistance.
Robert Beauchamp, a communications volunteer with the Red Cross, said Saturday morning that 16 people had been evacuated from the building where the fire broke out, at 400 Notre-Dame Street East. A further 22 families were evacuated from 430 Notre-Dame Est.
The mayor of Montreal, Valérie Plante, was sorry to see history repeat itself with the same owner, more than a year after the Place D’Youville fire.
“It’s a situation that we find absolutely deplorable, that we would never wish to have happen twice in two years,” she said at a press briefing on Friday afternoon.
—With files from La Presse Canadienne
