LAVAL, QUE. -- A 19-year-old woman has died, and two people have been injured in a house fire in the Sainte-Rose neighbourhood in Laval, on the north shore of Montreal.
The fire broke out at the end of the evening in a residence on Notre-Dame-de-Laval St.
According to Laval Fire Department operations manager Steven Saint-Jacques, the first firefighters arrived on the scene six minutes after the initial call.
"When the firefighters arrived, flames were escaping through all the openings," he said.
Two people on the scene, a father and his daughter who had escaped from the house, told firefighters that a third person was inside the building.
"Because of the intensity of the flames, it was impossible to get inside in the first few minutes," said Saint-Jacques.
Firefighters managed to get inside the house through a second-storey window and found the victim.
Eleven Laval Fire Department units and 26 firefighters finally brought the blaze under control at 12:52 a.m.
The building is a "total loss," said Saint-Jacques.
The firefighters are assuming that no smoke alarm was functional inside the residence.
"We are in prevention week, and we would like to remind people that working smoke detectors save lives," said Saint-Jacques.
The father and his daughter, who managed to escape the blaze suffered burns.
-- this report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 10, 2020.
