Co-operative House Burns!

WOW! JUST WOW!

My old place of employment has had a "major" fire. I'm going to swing by on my way into work and take a few photos. Blog update pending...

FIRE HEAVILY DAMAGES DOWNTOWN COMPLEX

A portion of Bank and Somerset streets in downtown Ottawa are closed this morning in the wake of a major overnight fire.

Crews were called to a four-storey commercial building at 275 Bank St. shortly after 2 a.m. and arrived to find flames billowing out of the upper storeys. Reinforcements were called in and the flames were finally knocked down after a couple of hours, but the building has suffered heavy fire, smoke and water damage.

Somerset St. between Kent and O'Connor streets, as well as Bank St. northbound at McLaren St. The roads are expected to be closed for several more hours as crews remain at the scene for cleanup operations and an investigation begins into the cause.

Damages could be in the millions of dollars. No injuries were reported.

UPDATE!

Sadly, no pictures. I swung by my old office over lunch with our camera, but forgot that the batteries had died while on a hike at Luskville Falls.

Arson investigators are looking for the cause of a "suspicious" fire that caused an estimated $4 million in damage to a four-storey commercial building on Bank Street early yesterday.

There were no injuries, but 68 firefighters, with 16 vehicles, needed two hours to bring the fire under control, acting district chief Steve Rhéaume said.

According to fire inspector Frank Donati, "from what I've seen, it looked suspicious."