7 people missing following old Montreal fire

[jennafyre]

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/number-o...even-1.6318911


Police say the number of people missing has risen from six to seven after a massive fire ripped through a historic building in Old Montreal on Thursday.
Work to partially dismantle the building will begin Sunday morning, said police and fire officials in an address to the media Saturday night.
They believe victims will be found in the rubble.


The second and third floors of the 15-unit building on Place d'Youville will be torn down ?stone by stone,? said Montreal fire operations chief Martin Guilbault.
Firefighters have not yet been able to enter the building due to safety concerns.
The partial demolition will be done slowly to protect the workers and preserve the building?s heritage, said Guilbault.



Montreal police arson commander Steve Belzil said it?s too soon to say whether the fire was criminal. The owner of the building is cooperating with investigators, said Belzil



FAMILIES FEAR THE WORST
One of the people missing is 18-year-old Charlie Lacroix from Terrebonne, just north of Montreal.

Her loved ones say she was staying with a friend in an Airbnb on the second floor.

"A friend of my daughter told us that she was there the night before, so we went to the police station and found out she had placed two calls at 911 in a period of three minutes saying that they couldn't get out because they were no windows in the room," her father Louis-Philippe Lacroix said.


"Hearing this news and having to break it to my boy and people is seriously the worst thing to go through as a parent," Lacroix said.

On Saturday, friends and family of the teen gathered at the site of the fire, where a makeshift memorial has grown.


People have begun laying flowers in front of the apartment building where a major fire broke out on March 16, 2023. Six people remain missing and authorities fear their bodies may be in the rubble. (Olivia O'Malley/CTV News)

"I don't believe it. I'm in complete denial. I don't want it to be true. I just want to wake up and for it to be a bad dream," said Kelly Ann Seguin, Lacroix's friend.

Lacroix said authorities have not found his daughter's body, but members of the Montreal fire department (SSIM) and Montreal police (SPVM) arson squad held a news conference on Saturday morning and said there may be victims in the building.

"The information validated in the last few hours, coming from various sources, allows us to believe that there may be victims inside the rubble," said SIM captain Martin Guilbault.

Among the missing people is 75-year-old photographer Camille Maheux, who lived in the building for 30 years.

Two of the nine people injured are still hospitalized at the burn centre of the Centre hospitalier de l'Universit? de Montr?al (CHUM).

UNAUTHORIZED AIRBNB UNITS
Some of the apartments were Airbnb units, police confirmed on Saturday.

Montreal bylaws require building owners to acquire a classification certificate for short-term rentals such as Airbnb.

Montreal city councillor Alain Vaillancourt is responsible for public security, and he said there were no certificates issued for the building in question.

"There's only a certain sector here in Ville Marie you can have Airbnbs on Saint Catherine [Street]; this is not one of them," said Vaillancourt. "Ville Marie never received a request for a permit for an Airbnb here, and there were never complaints of an Airbnb in this building."


Alina Kuzmina and her husband were sleeping in a unit they rented on Airbnb when the fire broke out.


They escaped by jumping through a basement window.

"Once I got out of the window, I looked to the right, and I saw a person who just jumped from the window on the second floor," said Kuzmina.

She says they saw smoke seeping through the door but never heard an alarm.

?If the fire alarm went off, we probably wouldn?t have had to risk our lives, and we would have maybe had time to grab more things because a lot of our belongings were left in there,?she said.

[raisedbywolves]

It's kind of like the Ghost Ship fire in CA.

[Angiebla]

It's kind of like the Ghost Ship fire in CA.

I thought the same thing.

[Boston Babe 73]

Sounds like the owner of the building is going to be in a heap of trouble.

Not having a permit for Airbnb isn't that crucial. Most cities have made it harder for Airbnbs because it creates a huge housing shortage. Corporations were buying up completely new buildings and using them strictly for short term rentals so that they could gouge people. I doubt there was anything extra in there that would have made it safer with a permit for Airbnb.

That being said, when was the last time this place was inspected by the city? Sounds like the combination of a slum lord and the city are to blame here.

[Bewitchingstorm]

Charlie: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100079535947836

Her father: https://www.facebook.com/lacroixlp

[Boston Babe 73]

Charlie: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100079535947836

Her father: https://www.facebook.com/lacroixlp

She was beautiful. How devastating.

[jennafyre]

First victim identified:

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/first-vi...9X1tzAl7rHOqiY

Montreal police have identified the first victim of the deadly fire in Old Montreal last week that has left two dead and five missing.

Insp. David Shane said it was a woman named Camille Maheux, who was 76 years old. Maheux was a photographer who lived in the building at the corner of Port Street and Place d'Youville for 30 years.

Her body was the first to be recovered from the rubble and was positively identified by the coroner, Shane said. Her family has been notified.

"On behalf of the Service de police de la Ville de Montr?al and the Service de s?curit? incendie de Montr?al, and all those involved in the management of this event, we wish to express our most sincere condolences to the family," Shane said.

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"Our hearts go out to you."

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Police are still working to identify a second body that was found Tuesday evening. An update from officials is scheduled for 8 a.m. Thursday.

The search for victims continues in Old Montreal, nearly a week after the five-alarm fire.

Rescuers are slowly but surely combing through the historic building, which contained multiple illegal Airbnb units at the time of the fire.

Authorities have not confirmed how many of the missing people were tourists but said victims were from Quebec, Ontario and the United States.

Speaking at an early morning press briefing, officials reiterated that the building's current state makes it unsafe for rescuers to enter on foot.

"That's why technicians will focus Wednesday on removing debris that poses a "secondary collapse risk," including two chimneys, explained fire operations chief Martin Guilbault.


Firefighters enter the building as they continue the search for victims Tuesday, March 21, 2023 at the scene of last week’s fire that left one person dead and six people missing in Montreal. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz

So far, strategic dismantling, crane exploration and camera probing have allowed investigators to peer under the third floor; but what lies below is harder to uncover.

"Some parts of the buildings are more collapsed than the others," Guilbault added.

The fire also injured nine, including two in critical condition. Families of the victims have been agonizing over the length of time that has passed since the fire as they wait for information about their loved ones.


Montreal police Insp. David Shane speaks to reporters about an update in the investigation about the fatal Old Montreal fire on Wednesday, March 22, 2023. (CTV News)


Montreal police inspector David Shane Wednesday morning said the period between locating and extracting a body can take hours, depending on its location.

"When they locate a body, then they will need to have an action plan to approach it and be able to conduct their work," he said.

Several family members have come forward and identified their missing loved ones.

So far, they are Charlie Lacroix, 18, Saniya Khan, 32, Dania Zafar, 32, and An Wu, 31.

[jennafyre]

https://montreal.citynews.ca/2023/04...re-violations/


Years of fire code violations at Old Montreal building where 7 died

"It could have been avoided," says Mazhar Khan, whose daughter, Saniya, died in the Old Montreal fire last month, among six others. Inspection reports revealed the building had years of fire safety code violations. Alyssia Rubertucci reports.

The site of the fatal Old Montreal fire last month that killed seven people was found to have violated multiple fire codes, according to documents revealed from an Access to Information request.

City inspection documents show between 2009 and 2018, the 14-unit building located at the corner of Place D?Youville and du Port St. had blocked and ?dead-end? secondary exits on the second and third floors and a non-compliant fire alarm system.


?I think there was a sheer negligence on the part of so many agencies and that includes city administration and the fire department, Airbnb,? says Mazhar Khan.

His 32-year-old daughter, Saniya, a master?s student in public health from Detroit, was one of the victims. Many of whom, like Saniya and her friend Dania, were visitors staying in an Airbnb that was operating illegally.

Early morning on March 16, a major fire broke out in the three-story building that housed apartments on the second and third floors and an architectural firm on the first.

A massive rescue operation was launched to save people from the burning building, and in the days that followed, recover the bodies of the people who couldn?t make it out.

They were:

Charlie Lacroix, 18
Walid Belkahla, 18
An Wu, 31
Friends Saniya Khan, 32, and Dania Zafar, 32,
Nathan Sears, 35
Camille Maheux, 76
?We got the body and we had a burial and but our suffering did not end there that was just the beginning,? said Khan.

Old Montreal Fire victims. From left to Right: (Top row) An Wu, Charlie Lacroix, Camille Maheux, Nathan Sears. (Bottom row) Dania Zafar, Walid Belkahla, Saniya Khan.


Previous visitors staying in the building raised safety concerns about some units, including an absence of emergency exits and a one-bedroom loft that had no windows.

The fire department provided more than 100 pages of records.

In 2011, the fire department filed a formal complaint with the government?s housing board, citing safety concerns surrounding renovations to a third-floor apartment leaving the fire escape inaccessible to other tenants.

?They completely blocked the exit, that?s a sheer violation,? Khan said.

In May 2018, a fire inspector found 10 violations during a visit to the building, including the lack of a working fire alarm, no clear signage for the emergency exits and a missing smoke detector in the stairway.

In 2019, a fire department report found an issue with the fire alarm. The inspection noted that the alarm needed to be loud enough so that it can be heard from inside the apartments ? that the current system did not conform to this.

On a follow-up visit in November 2020, the issued hadn?t been fixed, according to the report. It?s not clear whether changes were made following this time.

?There should have been an order that until they fix the problems of inhabitability, they would have not been allowed to rent out the apartments,? Khan said. ?They didn?t do it, they let it go.?

The documents do show that corrections were made over the years and that Benamor also paid fines of $450 fine and $200.

?The consequences were very minor and they took it so easy, even if they just depended on issuing notices,? he said.

CityNews did not hear back from Benamor?s lawyer, Alexandre Bergevin, on the issue.

Old Montreal fire: the stories of seven victims

Of the seven people who lost their lives, six were staying in unlicensed short-term rentals.

The father of Nathan Sears has filed a request for a $22-million class-action lawsuit against Emile-Haim Benamor, the building?s owner. Several of his building?s units were being rented out illegally on Airbnb.


Father of Old Montreal fire victim files $22M class-action lawsuit

The lawsuit, still to be authorized, would include the family members of the occupants who perished in the fire and all those who were in the building that day.

At least 22 people were inside, and they all likely have family members who were also affected by the events, the lawsuit said.

?Being a Muslim, I believe everyone has a time to go and to come, but there are some human factors, errors which would have made a difference,? said Khan.

The Quebec coroner?s office has launched an investigation of the fire and the City of Montreal said they won?t comment on this in light of the inquest.

[Boston Babe 73]

He was a slumlord and the city let him do it. What good are inspections if nothing is ever enforced. It's ridiculous.