A house fire in Etobicoke has left one man dead and a community mourning, after firefighters discovered the victim inside a burning home in the middle of the night. Toronto Fire Chief Jim Jessop said the blaze started in the basement, and that is where crews found the man just after midnight.
The conditions that greeted firefighters as they arrived were severe. Crews immediately made entry into the basement and were met with heavy, heavy black smoke and high heat, according to Jessop, who described the difficult environment his teams pushed into as they searched the home for anyone trapped inside.
During that search, the crews found the victim. Jessop said firefighters located one individual, who was quickly removed from the home and brought outside. Despite their efforts, that individual was pronounced deceased on the scene, making the fire a fatal one from the very first hours of the response.
Others in the home escaped more serious harm. A woman lived in the upstairs unit of the house with her grandson, and paramedics confirmed that two other people were assessed at the scene but were not hospitalized, leaving the man found in the basement as the only person killed in the blaze.
For those who lived nearby, the loss has been deeply personal. A neighbour described the victim as a friendly and helpful presence who would always come over to hang out and lend a hand with yard work, the kind of person you could call and count on, and spoke of the shock of seeing the street filled with fire trucks giving way to sadness at the loss of a friend.
With the victim identified and no other deaths reported, attention now turns to what sparked the fire. Toronto Fire says they are continuing to investigate what caused the blaze, working to determine how a fire in a basement unit turned deadly on a quiet Etobicoke street.