70 daycare children escape Montreal fire unharmed; residents’ return uncertain

Three people were taken to hospital with minor injuries after breathing smoke. Urgences-santé described them as stable. For the households forced from the building, however, the emergency had no clear endpoint: there was no confirmed assessment establishing whether they could safely return home.⁠1

The fire struck 7930 Saint-Michel Boulevard, near Crémazie Boulevard East, bringing children, apartment residents and people in the ground-floor shops into the same evacuation. About 150 Montreal firefighters responded. Crews arriving at the building began rescuing people from balconies, and the entire building was evacuated.⁠1

Section chief Francis Fleury told CBC News that the emergency call came in at about 12:45 p.m. Montreal time. That is the reported call time, not a verified moment of ignition. The latest confirmed operational accounts described an afternoon firefighting effort; they did not establish a later declaration that the fire was under control or extinguished.⁠1⁠3

The children’s safe exit was the clearest outcome of a complicated rescue operation. Firefighters specifically confirmed that all 70 had been evacuated unharmed. That assurance did not extend to a completed accounting of everyone who might have been inside the shops, daycare and apartments.⁠1

Division chief Martin Guilbault said nobody was known to be missing, but firefighters still lacked an exact building-wide headcount. Those statements are compatible: no missing person had been identified, while the work of establishing who had been inside remained unfinished. No death was reported in the available accounts, but a completed occupant check had not been announced.⁠1

The three people taken to hospital were not identified in the available account as daycare children, staff or residents. Their connection to the building should not be inferred from the fact that children and households were among those evacuated.⁠1

Fire burning within the building’s structure made the operation difficult. Guilbault expected the effort to extinguish it to continue into the early evening. “It’s a lot of work for us right now,” he told CBC. The expected duration was not a promise that the fire would be out by a particular hour.⁠1

That left the investigation behind the immediate task of putting out the fire. Its cause had not been established, and nothing in the confirmed account supported blaming a particular business or activity, or describing the blaze as either deliberate or accidental.⁠1

CP24 reported an early estimate of as many as 30 families displaced. That figure was provisional, not a final tally of households needing accommodation, and it did not establish how long anyone would be unable to return.⁠1

The apartment figures also differed. The initial account identified 36 apartments above the ground-floor businesses. In its October 19 coverage, 98.5 Montréal described approximately 50 apartments evacuated. It was not established whether the two figures covered precisely the same units, so neither can yet serve as a settled count.⁠1⁠62

These numbers measure different things. Apartments are not families, and families are not individual residents. Even a final unit count would not, by itself, establish how many people need somewhere to stay. A reliable picture of the housing impact requires both a displacement count and a determination of which homes remain safe to occupy.

The emergency also cut off a stretch of Saint-Michel Boulevard. Radio-Canada reported the road closed in both directions between Jarry Street East and Crémazie Boulevard East, according to CBC. Fleury asked the public to avoid the area. No subsequent reopening was established in the available reporting.⁠1

For residents, the decisive next information is not simply the number of alarms or firefighters. It is whether the building can be occupied again. The extent of the damage remained unclear, with no confirmed finding that the property was a total loss and no established authorization for households to return. The successful daycare evacuation was a substantial relief; it was not yet the end of this emergency.⁠1