Deadly Mississauga house fire not ‘suspicious’, fire marshal says

The Ontario Fire Marshal says an early morning house fire in Mississauga that left two people and a dog dead is not considered suspicious.

Emergency crews were called to a home on Bromsgrove Road just east of Winston Churchill Boulevard around 3 a.m. for reports of a fire.

Mississauga Fire Chief Deryn Rizzi says crews encountered heavy flames, smoke and “high heat conditions” at the home when they arrived.

“We had a crew that went into the basement to do a search and we had another crew that went to the second floor to do a search,” Rizzi says.

A man and a woman were found unconscious in separate upstairs bedrooms. Both were rushed to hospital where they were pronounced dead.

Two other people, a man and a woman, were able to get out of the house before crews arrived. They were found injured on the front lawn and rushed to hospital.

Police say the injured woman is in life-threatening condition and the man has minor injuries.

A dog and a cat were also pulled from the home, and the dog has been pronounced dead.

A neighbour says he woke up around 4:30 a.m. to flashing lights and commotion outside his bedroom window.

“Looked out the window and saw the fire trucks,” he says, adding he texted some of the other neighbours to make sure they were okay.

The fire was contained to the original home and was mostly under control by 6 a.m. Crews remained on scene and were still working to put out hotspots through the morning.

OFM says nothing to indicate fire is ‘suspicious’

The fire chief initially called the fire suspicious and said the investigation was being handed over to Peel Regional Police. In an update on Tuesday afternoon, the Ontario Fire Marshal (OFM) said there is nothing to indicate the fire is suspicious.

Rizzi originally pointed to “multiple points of origin” of the fire, but OFM investigators believe the fire started in the living room.

“It’s easy to understand their confusion because of the fire spread, but I believe there is only one area of origin of the fire,” says OFM investigator Jim Gillespie. “It’s my opinion that’s there one area of origin of the fire and the remainder of the damage is fire spread”

Investigators still don’t know how the fire started.

Officials say there is no evidence to suggest there were working smoke alarms in the home. The surviving residents said they did not hear an alarm during the fire.

“It could have malfunctioned by that particular time due to the high heat conditions.” she says.

Bromsgrove Road is closed from Winston Churchill to Cramer Street for the investigation.