The OPP has now deemed a fire that tore through a Trenton strip mall Tuesday morning suspicious.
Firefighters were called out to the blaze around 2:30 a.m. and found the building fully engulfed.
“The first crew, when they came in they saw flames shooting out the back,” says Quinte West Fire Chief John Whelan.
“It’s an old building and once the flames started going through the roof, it seemed to start to spread from one end to the other.”
Chief Whelan says it took around two hours to knock down the fire. The sheer scale of the fire and amount of smoke caused the alarms in a nearby apartment to go off.
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Whelan says they were lucky to extinguish it when they did, because the fire could have spread to neighbouring buildings.
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“This building is so close to apartments and other complexes at the back,” says Whelan. “We could have had a block fire here.”
Ontario’s Office of the Fire Marshal was asked to investigate the cause that is now being looked at as suspicious. On Tuesday afternoon, the OPP revealed that new evidence led them to this conclusion.
“Just shortly before the fire was reported, a vehicle was seen leaving the scene,” said Const. Derrick Osmond with the OPP.
Investigators are now looking for that possible suspect and what may have caused the fire.
The damage has been tagged at more than $500,000.
— With files from Shauna Cunningham.
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