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5mo ago

Evacuation to Continue Into Next Week as Thorncliffe Fire Smoulders Between Towers

Crews plan to open walls to reach smouldering particle board in a two‑inch cavity, forcing a prolonged evacuation.

A Toronto fire truck sits outside a building in Thorncliffe Park as crews continue to respond to a fire impacting two residential buildings.
Toronto Fire Services Chief Jim Jessop has called the five-alarm blaze, which originally started on Nov. 27, one of the 'more complex' fires he's seen in four decades.

Overview

  • Toronto Fire Chief Jim Jessop said residents from 11 Thorncliffe Park and 21 Overlea will remain out at least into next week with no firm timeline to extinguish the blaze.
  • The fire is burning in a 25–50 millimetre gap between the buildings filled with compressed wood, which is inaccessible to standard hoses and slow to extinguish.
  • Firefighters are piercing unit walls and using garden‑hose lines to reach the cavity, causing expected water damage and holes in affected apartments.
  • Engineers will conduct phased assessments once firefighting ends, including toxin testing and checks of structural integrity and life‑safety systems before any reoccupation.
  • Officials report 378 units evacuated and life‑threatening carbon monoxide readings up to 850 ppm, with 131 hotel rooms in use and roughly 370 individuals registered with the Red Cross; the cause remains under investigation and could take months to determine.