Dozens displaced following massive fire at Inglewood condo complex

Residents forced to flee burning building Flames ripped through the top level of a condo building and threatened two others in Inglewood. Alesia Fieldberg reports.

A condo building in the city’s southeast was heavily damaged in a fire on Wednesday morning and about 200 people have now been displaced.

Emergency crews were called to a condo complex in the 1400 block of 17 Street S.E. at about 1:30 a.m. for reports of a fire on a fourth floor balcony.

Crews from across the city were called to fight the four-alarm blaze and keep it from spreading to adjacent structures.

“It’s pretty uncommon. There was a large volume of flame from the roof of this building,” said Steve Dongworth, Chief, Calgary Fire Department. “We had the first crew on scene within about six minutes. Very large volume of fire, the first crew on scene called a second alarm immediately and pretty soon after that it escalated to third and fourth alarm, which is a lot of resources.”

About 200 people were evacuated from the building while crews worked to contain the blaze.

“Very threatening to the adjoining building. There’s actually two buildings here that are adjacent and the crews did a fantastic job knocking down the fire in the first building and preventing it from spreading,” said Dongworth. “Each of these buildings has 64 units so both of those buildings were evacuated so we kind of evacuated 128 units between the two buildings.”

Evan Slade lives in the building where the fire started and says he was alerted to the fire by neighbours.

“Someone was banging on our door so we opened it up and the minute the door opened the smoke started piling into our condo and then we walked out in the hall and ran down the hall and came outside,” he said.

Officials say six suites were damaged by fire and several others sustained smoke and water damage.

Isaac Smith lives on the fourth floor and says fire crews arrived on scene within minutes.

“I heard someone knocking at the door saying, ‘hey, there’s a real fire down the hall’ so I jumped up and knocked on my roommates door and grabbed my dog and left,” he said. “When I got out here, they were already here so they were here faster than I was outside.”

“it’s amazing the work the crews have done here but that’s the advantage of bringing a heavy weight of resources to the scene and knocking it down pretty quickly with aerial resources, we did an interior attack initially and that combined into a really successful event,” said Dongworth.

Utilities to both buildings have been shut off and a reception centre has been set up for evacuees at the Max Bell Arena.

Shuttles are being provided to residents who would like to get any personal items from their suites or recover their vehicle from the parkade.

The Red Cross is helping to support those residents and people with pets are being assisted by Calgary Community Standards staff.

No injuries were reported and crews are holding the scene to monitor for hot spots.

A fire investigator is working to determine a cause.

It is unknown when some residents will be allowed to return home.