A woman and her seven-year-old daughter were the two victims in the Old Montreal fire.
jeather linked a Ricochet story below, which I’m bringing up to the top here.
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Kate
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Kate
Weekend notes from CityCrunch and CultMTL and cultural notes from La Presse.
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Kate
A major fire that broke out early Friday on Notre‑Dame in Old Montreal is under investigation as one person is in hospital and 40 people were evacuated from an adjoining building.
Updating: Two people have died in this fire, in a building belonging to the same landlord who owned the Place Youville Airbnb that burned and killed seven people in March 2023.
Later, the CBC story previously linked in this post was updated to say that “security camera footage shows a hooded person wearing all-black clothing and a mask approaching the building. The person can be seen kicking in the restaurant’s side door and entering the building.”
MarcG
I’m surprised you didn’t make note of the fact that the building in Old Montreal has the same owner as the one on Place D’Youville that burned down last year.
Kate
That bit of information is in the lede in La Presse now, but it wasn’t when I linked it.
%&#@!!
Blork
And apparently he was running a “hostel” out of it. CBC piece says “Some comments, however, describe the accommodations as crammed, rundown and report bedrooms without windows.”
Kate
Sounds grimly familiar. If this guy owns any other buildings, they have to go to the top of the fire department inspection list.
Joey
Look, for all my griping about certain things, I am a fan of Projet Montreal. I think, among other things, they are probably the most competent and morally good political party to seek office in Quebec in a long time (largely because they are motivated by policy, progress and results, and are less driven by thirst for power than pretty much everybody else).
Today we’ve learned that the Metro stations we happened to have the opportunity to inspect need to be shut down (we can only wonder how many other structural beams throughout the Metro system are in similarly bad shape). We’ve also learned that the landlord whose negligence and greed led to a fire that killed seven people is *still* cramming people into unsafe accommodations, leading to the death of at least two people. It’s hard to not think this city is a little doomed – especially since the ostensible good guys are in charge.
Kate
Since I first posted that story there have been two deaths! Holy shit, that guy has blood on his hands.
Priorities at city hall definitely have to change after this. Even if they have to pull some people from friendlier roles and make them be building inspectors.
jeather
Whatever you think about Plante’s choices, she consistently chooses “I want Montreal to be a great city for the residents”. This is based on her definitions of great, which you may or may not agree with — but she isn’t making choices for tourists, or posterity, or the short term.
The thing with the metro is not really her fault, we have years of ignoring repairs coming due.
But the lack of inspections, the complete lack of policing of Airbnbs — these are things she should be doing more about. Why are we not inspecting all of that owner’s places. What happened to the Airbnb ridealong crew?
su
The owner was suing the city over the prior inferno last I heard.
Joey
@jeather, agreed. I guess I wish the city treated murderous slumlords with the same urgency and confidence as it does, say, people who let their dogs off leash in the park at night. I wish the city prioritized ticketing drivers who go through crosswalks near schools more than ticketing drivers who park in restricted zones five minutes before the restricted period ends. We can go on like this all day. Yes, the vast majority of the problems can really only be solved in Quebec City. Still.
Major Annoyance
Let’s not forget the role les pompiers played in this. Bunch of racist white fucks lounging around their man-caves all day – for serious money – none of whom can be arsed to get off his barbecuing butt long enough to do the occasional home inspection.
My neighbour here in our little Expo 67-era shoddy fire-trap all-wood-construction student housing slum just told me he’s been living here 15 years now. Total number of firemen knocking on his door to look over the smoke detectors and fire escape routes: Zero. In 15 fucking years. Same goes for my doors too.
Half the universe probably hates what’s-his-face by now. But the blame spreads around too.
WinklePig
This B*namor guy has k*lled over 10 ppl at this point
And fuck the police. Fuck the fire dept
walkerp
I’m just gobsmacked that this guy still owns buildings that are being rented out. I mean isn’t the obvious move for the city to send inspectors out to any buildings in his name and inspect and ticket them relentlessly?!
If the city isn’t going to do it, the people should tar and feather this loser along with the LaTulipe dink. String them up from the ring as an example to other slum lords.
Major Annoyance
@walkerp: You I like. Have a wonderful weekend.
jeather
There’s a weird detail in the Ricochet story that one of the witnesses is an employee of the owner.
Ian
At this point it’s pretty clear that people are on the take or wildly incompetent. Either way, it’s not a good look. And no, I don’t think la Plante is somehow above it all, despite the good face she puts on for show. In the end City Hall always turns out to have been in on it somehow.
I was told sotto voce by a former PM person who wanted to remain anonymous that City Hall is scared as fuck of lawsuits especially by developers, property speculators, and real-estate types, as that flavour of parasitical scumbags get very expensive very fast – they are often well-connected and have deep pockets. It was one of the main reasons PM refused to change zoning bylaws to protect Mile End from gentrification when all the lunch counters started pooping up along St Viateur. If this particular matter turns out to be a similar instance of cheap-ass cowardice, I would not be at all surprised.
jeather 21:39 on 2024-10-04 Permalink
And the Globe and Mail article where the fire department says there is no indication there are rooms without windows despite multiple complaints of just this.
Kate 23:20 on 2024-10-04 Permalink
A fire department spokesman is cited on that. But how well could they have inspected that guy’s buildings?
Ian 00:12 on 2024-10-05 Permalink
And more to the point, how much does it cost to buy a blind eye.
Nicholas 05:19 on 2024-10-05 Permalink
Are windows required in bedrooms for fire safety? A borough inspector visited my ground floor triplex due to a complaint by a previous tenant that there were bedrooms without windows. He said the rule was permanent bedrooms are required to have natural light for mental health reasons: a skylight or light well is acceptable, which would be much harder to access by firefighters than just breaking down the door. Temporary bedrooms, such as for guests (or short term rentals?) or if you want to get a good night’s sleep when a partner can’t sleep or went out drinking, or you worked a night shift, are not required to have natural light, so it was no problem to have a bed in there and host guests, so long as no one sleeps in that room permanently, according to the inspector.
There are lots of living units that are essentially inaccessible from a window during a fire. Two years ago Toronto bought a 23-storey ladder truck, and articles note it’s the tallest in North America, with the previous record being 13 storeys. There are lots of residential towers taller than 13 storeys. If a fire is blazing you’re not going to be able to evacuate 1,000+ units of the top 37 storeys or whatever from Maestria bedrooms using helicopters or whatever. I can’t find the rules for Quebec/Montreal right now, but in other jurisdictions so long as a building has sprinklers, a fireproof stairwell and some other features, it passes code for fire safety without window egress from bedrooms. I have no idea if this building or the last one had bedrooms without windows, or if that was a contributor in these deaths, but it doesn’t appear that windows in bedrooms are absolutely required for fire safety.
Kate 09:54 on 2024-10-05 Permalink
Nicholas, on the other hand, the two buildings in Old Montreal that have had fatal fires recently were a) three storeys high and b) very old. Norms for tall buildings are not relevant in this case, but the ability to quickly exit the building really is.
Fire inspectors would certainly take this into consideration. Because you can’t get out of a window on the 30th floor doesn’t mean the identical rules should apply to a third‑floor room in Old Montreal.
JP 10:01 on 2024-10-05 Permalink
I have nothing useful to add except to say that I’m sad and angry.
Kate 11:01 on 2024-10-05 Permalink
JP, yes.
If I were contemplating running for mayor next year, I might make proper building inspections part of my platform. But will people even remember these Old Montreal fires by November 2025?
walkerp 07:53 on 2024-10-06 Permalink
Just so tragic and awful.
What is the arson angle? Is the landlord paying someone to burn the buildings down so he can get insurance? Or is a tenant a target of extortions? Man, talk about a low crime. It’s one thing to throw a molotov at a close restaurant and another to set a residential building on fire where children live.
Tim S. 13:53 on 2024-10-06 Permalink
Maybe this will do for the firebombings the death of Daniel Desrochers did for the biker wars.
Nicholas 21:37 on 2024-10-08 Permalink
CBC confirms that windows aren’t required for fire safety, and a division chief of the fire department confirms this. It notes that generally windows are only ever considered as a means of egress from the ground floor or a basement.