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Melanie Mockridge returned to her apartment after the blaze to find part of her bedroom two floors below. (DAVE SIDAWAY)
Lachine fire leaves tenant with nothing
Apartment completely destroyed
Max Harrold
The Gazette
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Melanie Mockridge returned to her apartment after the blaze to find part of her bedroom two floors below. (DAVE SIDAWAY)
Melanie Mockridge has flashes of seeing her dog burned in its cage, but luckily that never happened. She and her two dogs weren’t at her Lachine apartment building when fire gutted it early Saturday. But that was her only good luck because, like a quarter of all Quebec apartment dwellers, she has no tenant insurance.
The exact cause of the fire was still being investigated by police this week, although it was most likely accidental, a police spokesperson said. It took nearly 100 firefighters seven hours to bring the five-alarm blaze completely under control.
A man’s screams could be heard as the fire started at about 2 a.m., when a barbecue exploded, tenants of Mockridge’s building told her.
The victim, a 47-year-old who had moved in recently a few doors down from Mockridge on the fourth floor of the building on 33rd Ave., was listed in very serious condition in a hospital Tuesday, with burns to much of his body.
Damage to the four-storey, 50-unit building was severe, with part of Mockridge’s bedroom ending up on the second floor.
Mockridge thought she lost everything when she came from her boyfriend’s home to check out her building after hearing of the fire Saturday afternoon.
She soon discovered all she had left was the bag of laundry she had taken to her boyfriend’s place Friday night.
Family photos, her computer and a new, $1,700 flat-screen TV and stereo system, which she is still making payments on were all gone.
Mockridge, a 38-year-old computer systems analyst, had recently been looking into buying tenant insurance
But that good intention was “too little, too late,” she said.
“It would have been a backup, something to help get back on my feet.”