Montreal police have confirmed the two victims of a major building fire in Old Montreal on Friday are 43-year-old Léonor Geraudie and her seven-year-old daughter Vérane Reynaud-Geraudie, who were French nationals.
The pair were inside a three-storey, 100-year-old building on Notre-Dame Street, which housed a restaurant on the main floor and a hostel upstairs, when a fire broke out around 2:30 a.m.
At a news conference Saturday afternoon, Montreal police Insp. David Shane confirmed there were 25 people inside of the building at the time of the fire and 23 have been accounted for.
“For the moment, there is no indication of additional victims,” Shane said, adding that investigations will ensure this is confirmed “beyond any doubt.”
Two other people were injured in the blaze, one critically, and they are still receiving treatment.
The fire broke out on the main floor of the building Friday and the flames quickly spread to the second and third floors.
Police would not share any details about the potential cause of the fire but said it was suspicious in nature. They also would not provide details about possible suspects as to not jeopardize the investigation.
The force’s major crimes unit is working closely with the arson squad on the case.
Security camera footage obtained by Radio-Canada shows a person breaking into the building minutes before the fire broke out. Montreal police said they would not comment on the footage.
Security footage obtained by Radio-Canada shows a hooded person wearing all-black clothing and a mask kicking in the restaurant’s side door minutes before the fire broke out.
Police are continuing their investigation Saturday, blocking off several roads in the area for their work. Hydro-Québec crews are also still working to restore electricity to some neighbouring buildings where power was cut.
About 16 individuals from the building and 22 households living in adjacent buildings are being supported by the Red Cross, the organization said in a statement Saturday.
‘I could see her arms waving,’ says witness
Sean Mollitt says it’s hard to get the images of the fire’s destruction out of his head.
Sleeping in his bedroom across from the building on Notre-Dame Street, Mollitt says he was awoken by what he thought was kids breaking windows.
Then he caught something far worse.
“All of a sudden, I hear a woman scream repeatedly, and it sounded absolutely horrible,” he said.
The fire broke out on the main floor of the building on Notre-Dame Street. Flames quickly spread, triggering a five-alarm fire. At least two people are dead and one is in critical condition.
Mollitt went up to his roof to see a woman standing on the fire escape of the building directly across from him.
“I could see her arms waving and [hear] her screaming and it was pretty horrific,” he said. “And then the whole building sort of got engulfed with black smoke and I couldn’t see anything anymore.”
He doesn’t know what happened to the woman.
Moments later, large flames would overwhelm the building and trigger a five-alarm fire response.
“About an hour later, I was literally sitting on my roof and I watched half the building collapse,” Mollitt said.
Safety concerns, coroner’s inquiry
The Montreal fire department (SIM) said the fire was brought under control early Saturday morning.
“They’re checking out the entire burned building, and if there are any small fires that need to be extinguished, they’ll put them out, and they’re securing the premises,” said SIM spokesman George Bele.
The owner of the building is Émile-Haim Benamor, who also owned the building on Place D’Youville in Old Montreal where seven people died in a fire in March 2023. All but one victim were staying in short-term rentals there.
A restaurant and a hostel were operating in the building on Notre-Dame Street and have different people listed as their owners.
Some comments on booking websites describe the hostel, Le 402, as cramped and rundown. Multiple reviewers also report bedrooms without windows or windows that wouldn’t open.
On Friday, Martin Guilbault, a division chief with the Montreal fire department, said that in 2023, a number of fire code infractions were cited by inspectors at the building, but he said they had all been corrected.
Montreal police said last year that the March 2023 fire at the building on Place D’Youville was intentionally set. Inspectors had flagged a number of fire safety violations at that building, including a lack of smoke detectors and problems with its fire escape. The building hosted Airbnbs, which were illegal in the area.
At a news conference Saturday afternoon near the scene of the fire, Quebec Public Security Minister François Bonnardel said a public coroner’s inquiry could be launched to shed light on the deadly fire and examine what could have been done to prevent the deaths — possibly combining it with the inquiry into the March 2023 fire, which was delayed due to the ongoing criminal investigation.
“We will see how we could combine these two unfortunate events … in the same investigation so that we are able to speed up the process,” he said.
Ron Karpman, a man who lives in the area and witnessed both Friday’s building fire and the one on Place D’Youville, says he’d like to see more regulations to make these kinds of short-term units safer.
“I have no objection against Airbnbs and hostels being in the area, I just have concerns about them being adequately protected for the people that are staying in them,” he said.