Three-alarm fire burns in Cote des Neiges

A three-alarm fire broke out Friday morning in Cote des Neiges near the Jewish General Hospital.

The fire started in a three-storey building on Place Decelles at 5:30 a.m. and was under control around 6:30 a.m.

When firefighters arrived flames were coming out of the basement and spread from the ground floor to the second floor, with smoke up to roof.

Jesse Hudson is the building's janitor and moved in four days ago. When he was woken up by the smoke alarm he went down to the building to investigate, spotted the flames, and then ran around the building pounding on doors to wake up residents.

"After I did all that I went back to my apartment and now there was so much smoke in my apartment that me, my wife and my 21-month-old son had to go onto our balcony because we couldn't walk through the rest of the building.

"The fire department came, very fast, and they took my son down which was... I thanked them a lot because he was freaking out because the firemen did their jobs, they took us down, because there was probably about six families stuck on their balconies. They took us down one-by-one," said Hudson.

Resident Maher Remaoun told CTV Montreal that he was impressed by the firefighters.

"We heard lots of noise at 5:30 a.m. we were all asleep and heard doors banging. A firefighter entered and told us to get out very fast. They did an excellent job," said Remaoun."They were there for us, it was really great."

Everyone managed to get out of the building safely and nobody was injured fighting the fire.