A $3.2 million dollar investment in St. Paul student housing may have gone up in smoke, after a devastating fire wreaked havoc on the construction early on Thursday morning.
Tala Tomlinson, who works at Extra Foods, was coming home from work shortly after 3 a.m. when she saw smoke pouring into the air. “I thought it was my vehicle,” she said, adding she got out of the car and checked, but then realized the smoke that was enveloping two blocks of town was coming from Portage College’s new student housing unit, which was still under construction. She called 911 and waited on scene until emergency units responded.
“It was only smoke in the beginning,” she said, adding she watched as the building burst out into flames from its roof. Even after she left the scene to her home on 46 Avenue, she watched the scene unfolding. “I could see the flames from my back window.”
St. Paul firefighters, backed up by an extra pumper truck and personnel from Ashmont, arrived on the scene just before 3:30 a.m. “to find heavy smoke and some fire on the south side of the structure,” according to deputy fire chief Trevor Kotowich. Within a few minutes of their arrival, flames broke through the roof and “the fire was fully involved.”
A little more than an hour later, crews got the fire under control, but firefighters had to spend the day mopping up hot spots. Six hours after the fire was reported, it was still smoldering, with fire crews on scene mopping up the damage and fire investigators looking for the cause and origin of the blaze. The college was closed on Thursday, but reopened the next day.
“All indications are leading to that it’s going to be a total loss fire,” said Kotowich, who is also a town councillor. From that perspective, he noted the fire would come as a big blow both to the community and the college, saying, “It’s completely devastating.”
His words were echoed by local MLA Ray Danyluk, who is also the Minister of Infrastructure and who was present at the groundbreaking for the project in April of 2010. “We worked so damn hard to get that thing. It’s tragic for the community,” he said. There had been a push for four or five years to build an affordable housing unit before the pieces finally fell into place, with the Town and County of St. Paul, Portage College and the Province of Alberta joining together to fund the project, noted Danyluk. “I’m having a hard time accepting it.”
The structure was intended to be open for student use in September, but Leona Geller, spokesperson for the college, speculated that now, with the extent of the damage, the structure may have to be bulldozed. “Once we know the extent of the damage, we’ll have a look at what we’re going to do to, in terms of the best course of action in mind of the students that would have lived there.”
While noting the fire and extent of damage was tragic, Geller said Portage College staff are thankful that no one was in the building at the time. “We’re just very grateful that there’s no injuries.”
