WATCH: Massive fire which ripped through St. Thomas’ downtown deemed arson

A St. Thomas building collapsed in a morning fire on Sunday. CTV London's Brent Lale reports.

Two commercial buildings and a future apartment building caught fire Sunday morning on St. Thomas’ main street.

Firefighters were called to 616 Talbot St. around 4 a.m. after the upstairs of a building went up in flames.

Smoke filled the entire downtown as firefighters attacked the fire from Talbot Street and an aerial ladder truck poured water from above to fight the fire next to the Indwell Apartments and St. Thomas City Bus Depot.

“Crews made entry and did a primary search and made sure nobody was there,” said Matt Rumas, fire prevention officer with St. Thomas Fire Department.

“Fortunately, nobody’s injured, no deaths. And then at that point, it became ‘Let’s stop this fire!’”

Flames shot through the roof and as firefighters were hammering it with hoses, the entire front of the upper building collapsed onto Talbot Street

The owner of the building got a call before 5 a.m. and made his way from Toronto, but by the time he arrived, it was already gone.

“I got it in November last year with my business partner and we were putting six residential units upstairs, and we had already fully renovated our commercial spaces,” said Brenndan Stevenson, the owner of 616 Talbot Street.

“We had the commercial spaces leased out and then we had the residential. We had the permits stamped and we were just about finishing up, maybe a month or two.”

Stevenson expressed his frustration as St. Thomas police have deemed the blaze an arson. He said over the past few weeks, he’s had a couple of break-ins and thefts, and now the building is gone.

The fire was contained to those spaces and did not spread into the adjacent Indwell building, which has 15 tenants.

“We’re just really thrilled that everyone’s safe and everyone’s okay,” said Justin Dewaard, Indwell regional director.

“Everyone has a place to go where they are cool, and they have food and water. Right now, we’re just caring for our tenants.”

Fire said the Indwell tenants should not be affected or displaced.

“When they renovated Indwell a couple of years ago, they did a great job,” said Rumas.

“The firewall did its job. Crews that responded did their job very well and were able to save Indwell. As of now, there was no smoke, no water damage to both Indwell and the bus depot beside it.

As many as 25 firefighters were called in, and throughout Sunday morning they continued to battle hot spots from multiple angles.

Talbot Street was closed between Ross Street and Princess Avenue and remains closed as of 11:30 a.m. Sunday as the investigation continues.

“We’ve got Streib (Trucking and Excavating Ltd.) in here with the excavator and we’re going to get this cleaned up,” said Chief Dave Gregory of St. Thomas Fire Department.

“It’s deep seeded into the building, so it’ll be going for a long time. We can’t get in it. Plus, the structures, we don’t want anything else falling into other buildings. We’re going to clean this up and get to a point where we can knock down some of those still spots that are burning in the building.”

It was a frustrating morning for Stevenson, but it could have been worse.

“You never like to get those calls, but sometimes it happens and you’re just lucky you have insurance,” he said.