Isabel Mosseler
Tribune
On Tuesday night, July 23, Anthony Laforge was awakened at 3:00 a.m. and that’s when his nightmare began. His residence at Main and Second Streets in Sturgeon Falls was on fire. The fire started in the rear of the building where the landlord lived. A passerby noticed the fire, called 911, and started pounding on the door to wake the residents. According to West Nipissing Fire Chief Frank Loeffen, Laforge then went to check on his landlord, but that part of the building was already engulfed in flames. Fortunately, the landlord was away, working at a job further north.
Two days later, the investigative unit of the Ontario Fire Marshall’s office was on site. The results of the investigation are not yet available, but the building is a complete loss. Laforge suffered extensive losses, fire, smoke and water damage.
Loeffen confirms the blaze gutted the house and took a lot of effort to suppress. “We received the call at 2:54 in the morning. Station One here out of Sturgeon responded, including the ladder truck. We also called Verner for personnel (…). We did send one firefighter with heat exhaustion to the hospital,” he says of the intervention. By the next morning the fire was suppressed. The rear of the building had been engulfed, but Leoffen says that, aside from water damage, Anthony Laforge’s apartment did have some salvageable contents. He says the fire department did try to retrieve some of the personal items. “We were able to get a lot of his clothing, both him and his partner (…) Anything that was in the closet [that had] minimal water damage. (…) Everything that we had pulled out was down on the main level.”
Laforge had to wait for permission to enter his dwelling, and upon entry discovered that someone had entered the premises and rifled through his property. When told that, Loeffen opined, “Unfortunately, the fact that once we were done and the insurance company had secured the perimeter, does it keep people out? (…) I had offered to, if he needed, we could have brought one of our enclosed trailers, load up some of his personal stuff if he wanted.” Asked if the fire department does this as part of their service, Loeffen says, “No, that’s not something we automatically do. Again, he (Laforge) was definitely in a state of shock. He had no insurance on his apartment, on his contents. (…) As for if somebody broke into his apartment after it had been secured, that doesn’t surprise me. There’s enough people roaming around town. You know, if they see an opportunity like that, they’re going to get in, snooping (…) Unfortunately that’s the society that we’re in. You read about that throughout any community that you evacuate due to wildfires. The looters are there. You’ve got to bring police, military in to try and secure the properties,” the chief deplores.
Laforge confirms that he went into shock as he watched his place burn down. “Yeah, I sat there for a long time, yeah, it was horrible.” He estimates the fire was suppressed around 5 am, but smoldered all day long, “So they had to keep just blasting water, and that’s when most of my damage came.” He recounts the ordeal in detail. “There were a few explosions, one big one by the door, there were many explosions.”
Laforge woke up to smoke in his apartment, so he looked around, but noticed no fire in his place. “So I opened the door between the two places, there was a little entrance between both places, and I opened that, and the smoke just, boom, rushed in. I knew it was his side, and then, bang, someone pounded on my door. It was the lady going by, and saw the flames in his place, and she was pounding on it. I woke up and got out of there. (…) I just got my wallet, my phone, and when I ran out on the right side of the back, and I noticed [the] right side all on fire. I ran around the other side, and then his entrance was full of fire too, so I pounded on the window. I broke the one window, yelled in. I ran around back inside my house — between the two entrances there is his door — so I kicked that, and I ran inside to see if he was there, opened the door and went inside, and yelled and screamed, and the stairs were already on fire. I guess that’s when I got smoke inhalation; I ran back out.”
The landlord was not there. Laforge texted him. “He answered me about ten minutes later.” Laforge let the firefighters know there was no one in the building. He also identified the landlord as Jacob Powley.
Today, Laforge is happy to be alive. He has been fortunate enough to find accommodations very close by. He was put up at the Comfort Inn for three days by the Red Cross and has been able to recover some of his belongings, including two laptops. He has access to WiFi and is back at his job as Senior Director of Governance , Lands & Environment at Magnetawan First Nation. “My sister’s really helping, and I have a great amount of friends. Red Cross helped right away (…) and I got some money for food and stuff, because I had no ID (…) It was great that Red Cross helped me out. It was great.”
While the ordeal was traumatizing, he remains grateful. “It was horrible, and it was terrifying to see all that and how fast it spread, in an old house like that, it really spread fast.” The smoke detectors did go off, and he credits the passerby who hammered on the door and called 911 with saving his life. “It was really great that somebody made the effort to stop (…) I was sleeping pretty good (…). It’s horrifying, but you just got to make sure you get out right away and try to save others if you can.”
Chief Loeffen agrees Laforge was lucky to have a working smoke alarm and a good Samaritan. “At 3 o’clock in the morning, they were lucky that somebody noticed the fire (…) heading either back from work or to work (…) banging on the door. (…) The flames were already shooting up inside the building in the back end. Like I said, it happens quick,” he advises.
Laforge is not asking for any public support. “I’m going to get through it as much as I can. I’ve got family and friends helping out. I had friends come over this morning, and I’m going to get a dresser and some more towels, stuff like that. I’m able to [use] my neighbor’s Wi-Fi downstairs to work, so I’m kind of working from home right now, and at least I got it up and running, and two of my laptops are working (…), so I’m back at work.”
As for the owner of the building, “We had contacted police to try and track him down, see where he was. He’s up north somewhere, I guess he works for either the mines or something. So he had left apparently Sunday.”
Investigating lithium ion batteries as possible cause
“The reason I called the Ontario Fire Marshall in on that one,” says Loeffen, “there was an electric bike that was in the back apartment. Right now, direction from the province is they want to track anything like that, that’s with rechargeable batteries, to see if that was a possible cause, or if it’s not.” He adds that two rechargeable lithium-ion battery cells were found in the yard.
