Firefighters Extinguish Five-Alarm Blaze In City’s West End

Flames broke out at about 12:30am in the Dupont and Dufferin Sts. area and quickly engulfed the abandoned residence before spreading to a nearby three-storey warehouse occupied by John Coburn, an artist.

Coburn managed to escape without being hurt thanks to the quick-thinking mother and daughter living across the street, who alerted him to the flames.

“Well, I was just screaming ‘Buddy, are you there? The house is on fire, you need to get out.’ I just kept banging and banging. Eventually he came to the door and we got him out and he was safe,” said Shyrlann Parise.

Shyrlann’s mother Debbie Parise recalled the man’s confusion: “He came running down in his underwear and said ‘What is going on?’ We said ‘Buddy, your house is on fire, just get out of the apartment. Just get the hell out.'”

It’s believed the paint supplies inside may have fed the flames. By about 2am the blaze had grown to five-alarm status and 125 crews and 26 trucks were on the scene to bring it under control.

“The building housed some carpentry workers, carpentry shop, so it had a lot of wood products, and upstairs there was a studio where an individual was a painter and he was doing painting, so he would have, you know, thinners and other flammables in the area,” described Dep. Chief Pat McCabe of Toronto Fire.

Fears that the inferno would spread even further prompted officials to evacuate about 25 residents from homes in the area as a precaution.

There were no injuries reported, but several firefighters put themselves in even more danger when they decided to move a number of propane tanks located behind the warehouse. Luckily they were able to move the tanks – several of them barbecue-sized and 16 larger ones – before they exploded.

Eventually the roof and walls of the building collapsed in the intensity of the flames and firefighters were subsequently able to gain control of the fire. Area residents were allowed back into their homes at about 5am.

Coburn, though grateful to be alive, was devastated by the loss of the art.

“It’s a nightmare,” he said. “I had paintings half finished. I had 30 years of drawings and sketch books from Europe.”

Fire officials said it could be months before the cause of the blaze was determined. The Fire Marshal’s office estimates the damage amount at $750,000.

Dupont St. was reopened one lane in either direction between Dufferin St. and Ossington Ave. but traffic was moving slowly through the area.

• CityNews cameraman Bert Dandy was on the scene during the worst of the flames – to see more on Bert, click on Kevin Frankish‘s latest entry in the Inside BT blog here.