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Several Ottawa residents are displaced and two pets are dead after a rash of six residential fires across Ottawa over a span of 48 hours.
The fires occurred between Wednesday evening and early Friday morning and involved homes, townhouses, an apartment and a residential highrise across the city.
While several of the fires remain under investigation, Ottawa Fire Services says there is no indication they are connected.
“It’s not overly common that there’s six fires in such a short period of time,” Nicholas DeFazio, a public information officer with Ottawa Fire Services, told Global News.
“But our firefighters are always ready for that.”
The six fires left multiple residents displaced and several people suffering from smoke inhalation. A dog and cat were also found dead following a fire in a residential highrise on McLeod Street.
Other incidents included a garage fire caused by an electric scooter, a bedroom fire in a townhome on Meadowbrook Road and a fire in an apartment above a commercial complex on Merivale Road.
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DeFazio said one of the biggest lessons from the recent fires is the importance of having working smoke alarms.
In one of the incidents, a resident was awakened by a smoke alarm and safely escaped before firefighters arrived.
DeFazio called the outcome of one of the fires “lucky,” noting the home did not have working smoke alarms.
“We did see one of these six fires where the house didn’t have working smoke alarms in the house,” DeFazio said.
“Whereas another one, the person was woken up by a working smoke alarm and got out safely.”
According to Ottawa Fire Services, smoke alarms provide residents with their best chance of escaping a fire.
“New construction gives you about three minutes to get out of a fire before it’s too late,” DeFazio said.
“That’s not a lot of time.”
The department is also urging residents to review fire escape plans with their families and establish meeting points outside their homes in the event of an emergency.
DeFazio said unattended cooking and improperly discarded smoking materials remain the two most common preventable causes of fires in Ottawa.
“One of the fires for sure has already had the investigation completed and cooking was the cause,” he said.
The department is encouraging residents to stay in the kitchen while cooking or set timers as reminders and to properly dispose of cigarettes and other smoking materials, particularly during periods of hot and dry weather.
“These things do happen,” DeFazio said. “Don’t have that, ‘It’s never going to happen to me’ attitude.”
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