Large industrial building fire in Point Douglas

Winnipeg fire crews are expected to be at the scene of an industrial building fire well into Tuesday.

The Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service says it was called to the structure on Sutherland Avenue – between Maple Street North and Argyle Avenue – shortly after 5 a.m.

Crews initially worked to contain the three-alarm fire to the building before actively working to extinguish it.

“We’re still currently putting out spot fires and we will be responding with additional crews well into the evening, if not into the morning,” Rob Labossiere, Acting District Chief with the WFPS, said Tuesday afternoon.

Three aerial ladders, around 20 other pieces of equipment or vehicles, and well over 100 firefighters fought the blaze in Winnipeg’s Point Douglas area. The fire spanned an entire city block.

Labossiere says the multi-use industrial building contained tires, vehicles, and a variety of chemicals which made it challenging for crews to fight the fire.

“Our concerns are just to protect the citizens of Winnipeg and protect our crews on scene,” he said. “We want to make sure we also protect the environment. We’ve had a lot of involvement from different organizations including the province, the environmental division is also on scene, which are monitoring the air quality and doing additional testing to see if the water runoff would be a contamination to the area.”

Winnipeg fire crews battle industrial building fire on Sutherland Avenue July 4, 2023. (Steve Anderson/CityNews)

Initial reports from the WFPS say the building included some businesses, but otherwise was vacant.

Residents living within a three-kilometre radius of the building were evacuated. Those living outside the zone were asked to close their windows and stay inside.

‘Grabbed everybody, grabbed the dogs’

Paul Gabrielle and his family live right across the street from the industrial building and say everything happened so fast.

“Police were banging on my door at 5:30 in the morning,” said Gabrielle. “We didn’t know what was going on. We cracked the door, and they kept saying, ‘you have to get out.’ So, we grabbed everybody, grabbed the dogs, and bailed out. We haven’t been allowed back since.”

He says the situation was terrifying.

“I was sitting there watching the fire department spray my house down so it wouldn’t catch fire.”

Damian Fitzner has lived in the Point Douglas area for 28 years. He says he’s never seen a fire of this magnitude before.

“I saw black smoke pluming out from the trees above, in that direction of it,” said Fitzner, who lives a few blocks from the industrial building. “I figured I had to wake everyone up and I have to tell people. I banged on the old man’s door, and I called him. He said ‘what’s wrong’ and I said there was a building on fire, and we might have to evacuate. Sure enough, 20 minutes later, we evacuated.”

Gas lines, power cut

Jennifer Chartrand was forced to leave work when she heard about the fire.

“I had to check the house to make sure everything was OK,” she recounted. “My son-in-law went to work this morning and he came back and said, ‘look at this fire.’ He came outside and this big cloud of smoke came. I had to walk to the bus stop and there were these big clouds of smoke, and it was so hard to breathe.”

Residents forced to evacuate were put into Winnipeg transit buses and taken to shelters nearby. Gas lines in the area were shut down and power was cut off, impacting around 500 residents in the area.

“It’s very scary,” said Darryl Ellis, who lives near the industrial building. “There are too many fires in this area. You have these six-storey buildings on Main Street. First that one, then this one. It’s too close to home.”

The WFPS says no injuries have been reported, and the cause of the fire remains unknown.

The area surrounding the fire was closed off to traffic. WFPS urged drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians to avoid the area and find alternate routes.