A large fire in downtown Windsor is now out.
Crews were called to the 400-block of Tuscarora Street between Glengarry Avenue and Mercer Street just before 4:30 Thursday morning.
They found heavy smoke and flames coming from the single-storey, multi-unit residential building.
Mike Coste, Chief Fire Prevention Officer, says crews fought the blaze as best they could but it was out of control with the roof eventually collapsing.
"So the crews had to go defensive. As of the information we have right now we have no injuries, I don't know how many people are displaced but I know there are several. It's going to be a large loss fire, over $500,000 in damages at this time."
Coste says it's currently being investigated by a fire prevention officer with the City of Windsor along with Windsor Police, but it's not suspicious in nature they're just coordinating their efforts.
He says the fire quickly started getting out of control in the walls of the building and spreading.
"Once it gets to that point it's through the roof and it puts firefighters at risk," he continued. "As you can see there's a collapse of a huge air conditioning unit in the middle so the firefighters safety at that point becomes our number one goal."
He says this was a large fire to put out which took some time, and it looks like the building might have been commercial at one point before becoming residential.
"But you have multi-units, multi-walls, multi-crawl spaces. It's not two storey, it's one storey high ceilings and once it gets through all the walls and everything it's hard to get at it and attack," he stated.
Coste says unfortunately, due to the damage to the building, it will now be a teardown.
The cause at this time is listed as undetermined.
Some roads in the area are re-opening, however, Tuscarora between Glengarry and Mercer will remain closed.
Windsor fire crews use two aerial trucks after a fire in the 400 block of Tuscarora Street, July 14, 2022 (Photo by AM800's Rob Hindi)