Residents of Inglewood condo still reeling after massive fire

Joel McNichol says he was disoriented when he woke up Wednesday morning in his Inglewood condo.

He heard thumping sounds from the floor above him.

Seconds later, the fire alarm started blaring.

Then, after he stumbled out of his bedroom, he saw his living room glowing.

"I looked out the window and then I just saw flames everywhere," he said Friday.

"The brightness was there, and the panic, like instant. It's so surreal, because you're thinking, I can't really tell how close those flames are."

Early Wednesday morning, 150 people were evacuated from a pair of four-storey condo buildings on 17th Street S.E. One of the buildingswas fully engulfed in flames.

The blaze was so intense the fire department hiked its response to four alarms, which is rare for Calgary.

McNichol lives in the building that was hit by fire, but his home suffered only minor smoke and water damage, thanks in part to fire doors that appeared to contain the worst of it.

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Still, he doesn't know when he will be able to return.

Property manager Pete Dhaliwal said he was hoping residents of the unaffected building would return to their homes as early as Friday.

Dhaliwal estimates 20 to 30 units of the other building were damaged by fire and those residents likely won't get back into their homes until next year. He said tenants of the same building whose homes escaped the blaze relatively unscathed might be able to move in sooner.

After David Murray and his fiance Jessica Caden fled their unit Wednesday morning, they watched the building next door burn as they tried to contain squirrely cats.

"I break down in tears when I think about how many people were willing to help," Murray recalled.

"We were sitting on the street across from the building holding a cat that was clawing us to shreds, and an innocent bystander came up and gave us two cat carriers.

"People were walking around with soup, coffee, water, shoes, opening up their houses for washrooms."

Murray and Caden, like other residents, were allowed back into their condos briefly Friday to get more of their belongings. They lugged a cat tree and bags on their way back to a hotel, where they hoped not to stay too much longer.

Roommates Taylor Oakley and Ashlyn Boucher stuffed clothes into garbage bags after returning to their water-logged apartment.

They rented a unit on the floor below the fireand returned to find their furniture and electronics destroyed.

They didn't have renters' insurance.

"You can't really replace all the videos and photos and things like that saved on our laptops," Oakley said.

Dhaliwal said fire investigators continue to look into what caused the blaze. He said they've ruled out electrical, gas and a patio barbecue as potential causes. He wondered if it was a smouldering cigarette.

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