Investigators probing an early morning rooming house fire in Wallaceburg that killed three people have been slowed by frigid temperatures as they try to pinpoint exactly what happened and why.
While the size of the sprawling home, which boasts several compartments and two stairwells, also presented a few challenges, “the weather is going to be the piece that holds us up the most,” said Mike Ross, the lead Ontario Fire Marshal investigator.
Right now, small areas of the rooming house are being sectioned off and heated so investigators can sift through the debris to look for the cause of the fire.
“Until we can thaw this stuff out and then process the material and go through it, I would say a couple of days at least,” Ross said about the length of the investigation.
Everything’s under consideration at this point. Nothing’s been confirmed, nothing’s been refuted, we’re still working through it.”
Firefighters from Station No. 3 Wallaceburg were on the scene of the blaze within three minutes of the call coming in at 2:11 am Thursday. They arrived at 315 Elgin St. to find a rapidly developing fire, Chatham-Kent fire chief Chris Case said Thursday.
A male was pronounced dead at the scene while a female was rushed to hospital by paramedics and later pronounced dead. The body of another person, unaccounted for earlier in the day, was discovered in the basement of the home after the fire had been extinguished.
Police didn’t release any more information Friday about the deceased.
On Thursday, local fire officials said it wasn’t known if there were working smoke and carbon monoxide alarm in the rooming-style house.
Ross said Friday he had so far found two smoke alarms in the building.
“There’s some evidence one went off,” he said.
As for where the deadly fire started, Ross said investigators were “still in the process of working through that.”
Investigators, he said, were focused on the ground floor of the home, “but we haven’t refined it beyond that.”
Some neighbors said the home was once a grand residence to some of the community’s most prominent members, but it had fallen into a state of disrepair over the years and had become a rental to several tenants.
Chatham-Kent’s director of building development services, Paul Lacina, said he couldn’t comment on the prior state of property due to the ongoing investigation by the provincial fire marshal.
Lacina said Chatham-Kent’s zoning bylaw was amended a few years ago to allow people to rent rooms in their homes, primarily to accommodate a growing demand for student housing.
“Depending on how many persons you are renting to, will determine if a building permit is required and/or if a license is required,” he said.