One person dead following fire at Scarborough apartment

Published Sep 18, 2024 • Last updated Sep 18, 2024 • 1 minute read

One person was killed when a ninth-floor apartment on Bridletowne Circle in Scarborough went up in flames Tuesday night. Photo by Jack Boland /Toronto Sun

An elderly bed-ridden woman is dead after a fire at a Scarborough apartment on Tuesday night.

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Toronto Fire were called to 3131 Bridletown Circle, northwest of Warden and Finch Aves. E. around 8:30 p.m. for a two-alarm fire in a ninth-floor apartment that was fully engulfed in flames.

Sandra Noronha, who lives on the 25th floor of the building, said she smelled smoke upon opening her front door and heading down to the ground floor via the fire stairs.

In describing the fire, she said it was “amazing” but terribly and tragically.

“It was really shocking,” said Noronha, who has never encountered a fire since she moved into the building in 2005. “You see fire coming out of the condo, and big flames. It was amazing to see that something like that could happen.”

Noronha said she didn’t know the victim, since they lived on the top floor, but noted “it must be hard” for her neighbours.

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“It’s hard for them. It’s hard to process,” she said.

The balcony area was charred black and the windows of the bedrooms had blown out because of thermal stress.

Several floors on the rear side of the building from the ninth floor up had been blackened. A large group of cleaning teams could be seen on Wednesday morning heading into the building to clean up the fire and smoke damage.

The talk around the building is that the deceased woman was an amputee who had a regular Personal Support Worker coming in daily to help her out.

Jill Carter, an investigator with the Office of the Fire Marshal, was on the scene before noon with two other investigators — and along with Toronto Fire — to investigate the cause and origin of the fire.

“We are in the preliminary stages of our investigation,” said Carter. “And what I can tell you is there was a bedroom fire. And a female has been pronounced deceased from their injuries of a fire that occurred last night.”

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