MONTREAL - A 20-year-old woman is dead, another woman remains in critical condition in hospital and three children were also hospitalized as a result of a late-night fire.

The sad part is that the death and the injuries could have been prevented.

The Montreal fire department confirms that the Van Horne St. fire at 1:45 a.m. Wednesday began as an electrical fire in the basement, and the tenants would have been able to get out before smoke inhalation overcame them if there were working smoke detectors installed.

But they weren't.

"We usually inspect buildings after we get a complaint from citizens," said Montreal's chief fire inspector, Alain Rouleau. "Sometimes we do random inspections."

The building where the fire took place Wednesday morning hadn't been inspected since at least 2002, and the city lacks the manpower to inspect every building on a regular basis.

That is very frustrating to Cote St-Luc city councilor Dida Berku, who says the quality of service has dropped dramatically since the Island's fire departments were merged in 2002.

"As a result the inspections have completely dropped off," said Berku, who is also a lawyer. "People need to complain if there are problems."

Tenants Rights Advocate Arnold Bennett says the city is light years away from being able to properly monitor the fire safety code in the city's residences.

"Even if they double the budget they have now, they'd only be scratching the surface because there are so many buildings and they're getting older," he said.

But fire officials say that's only part of the problem. They knocked on hundreds of doors in the area on Wednesday and found that about 70 per cent of tenants didn't have a functioning smoke detector.

We say it over and over, it's simple to install, it's inexpensive," Rouleau said. "Have a smoke detector with a working battery. They save lives."

Most of the tenants are now being put up at an area hotel and trying to get their lives back in order, and it remains uncertain when they will be able to return home.

Berku says the tenants could try to hold the building owner responsible for what happened.

"From a civil point of view the tenants can sue for their damages and for all their suffering and even for their loss of life," she said. "But that's a civil lawsuit, it's not a criminal case."