Neighbour hailed as hero for alerting residents to Scarborough apartment fire

A man is being hailed as a hero for alerting multiple residents to a Scarborough apartment fire that sent one woman to hospital.

Emergency services were called to the low-rise building at 3941 Lawrence Avenue East near Orton Park Road just before 5:30 p.m. for reports of smoke from a window.

The one-alarm fire was found in a unit on the third floor and has since been put out.

A woman has been taken to hospital with serious, but non-life-threatening injuries. Paramedics said they had multiple units on scene assessing patients, but no one else was taken to hospital.

Justin Middlebrook, who lives across the street, was the one who called 911 and alerted many of the building’s residents to the fire.

Middlebrook tells CityNews he was on his balcony with his daughter when he began to smell smoke.

“I just started yelling for people to get out, I told my wife to call 911,” said Middlebrook. Then, he ran inside. Middlebrook said he knocked on as many doors as he could, starting with where he believed the fire was originating from.

“They did answer the door. They had stuff around their face I guess from the smoke, they came out shortly after as well.”

Iftekhar Ahmad lives in the building and says the woman who was injured is a family friend, who had several cats in the apartment.

“I saw the two cats they had rescued they came out of a yellow piece of paper. I think… I’m not sure if they survived or not,” said Ahmad.

He said he was alerted to the fire when Middlebrook pounded on his door and calls his actions heroic. “He rescued me, I was sleeping … I was the last person out so I could have been sleeping,” said Ahmad.

Middlebrook said he didn’t really think about running towards the danger, but had some nerves once he got close to fire.

“While I was on the top floor it kinda kicked in when I was banging on the door of where the fire was, I was nervous, were the flames gonna shoot out at me? That had my heart going for a second other than that I didn’t really think about it,” said Middlebrook.

A TTC shelter bus has been brought in for residents that had to evacuate, but residents have been allowed to return. The cause of the fire is still undetermined.