One person has been found dead inside a house in Mississauga that was gutted by a fire on Monday night.
Official shared the news late Tuesday afternoon, saying that the Office of the Chief Coroner will be investigating the cause of that individual’s death, while the Office of the Ontario Fire Marshal will be working to determine the origin, cause, and circumstances of the fire.
Peel Regional Police (PRP), meanwhile, will follow-up should any criminality arise in those investigations.
“What I can say right now is that we’ve accounted for the individuals that are supposed to be in the residence. They’re out of the country right now,” Const. Tyler Bell said early Tuesday evening.
“So right now, we’ve got the difficult task of trying to ascertain who is the individual.”
The fire, which also resulted in an explosion, broke out at around 10:40 p.m. on Monday at a house on Select Court which is just west of McLaughlin Road and north of Eglinton Avenue West.
Police initially said no one was injured in the blaze, as no one was believed to be inside the residence at the time.
Platoon Chief Dave Shaw, of Mississauga Fire and Emergency Services, said there were initial reports that there may have been eight people inside the dwelling.
“So it was an enormous relief when crews confirmed nobody was inside,” he told reporters at the scene.
Mississauga Fire said the home’s occupants are in Vietnam.
Bell, of PRP, added that all occupants of the dwelling, including those in the main residence as well as a basement tenant have since been accounted for.
“We have no reason to believe that that anyone should have been in the home that’s associated to the residents at the time,” he said.
Fire being investigated as ‘suspicious’
This fire is being investigated by police as “suspicious” at this point, Bell said, noting so far there’s nothing overt to indicate that anything criminal occurred.
“These investigations are complex. As debris is taken to another location and analyzed evidence may come to fact but right now there’s there’s nothing that stands out to us right now that this is a criminal investigation,” he said.
“And as is the case with most sudden death investigations, we treat them as though they’re suspicious, and the majority of the time it turns out not to be.”
Heavy equipment to do ‘thorough search’
The media officer added that heavy equipment will be arriving at the scene of the fire likely on Wednesday to “commence a more thorough search.”
“The structure right now is unstable, that’s why no one has gone in and conduct a more thorough search. And as the investigation unfolds, we’ll be able to ascertain a little bit more about what transpired in the sequence, whether it be an explosion then fire or vice versa.” he said.
Neighbours shocked
People who live in the area are shocked by what has happened, especially the discovery of a body in the wreckage.
“We were just getting ready for bed and heard a loud boom,” one neighbour told CTV News Toronto.
A woman named Stella who lives nearby also reported hearing a “huge explosion” while lying in bed.
“My husband and I started running to see what happened, and of course we are devastated by the blast,” she said.
Neighbours called 9-1-1- as the watched the fire rage through the home.
“We were all outside. We were very scared, terrified, actually, that the fire would come out here,” a man from the area told CTV News Toronto on Tuesday.
“Somehow we could gather our personal possessions quickly, the essential documents, and we ran out,” added another.
“Oh my god! It was blown up so big. It was flaring up and also with the wind it was making a kind of funnel type of fire. It was whipping to our house.”
And while they worried about their own homes and families, residents of the street also expressed concerns for the people who lived inside the home, which one neighbour described as a family with young children.
“You know, when it started your first instinct is to try to help them but you really should not be,” Stella said.
“The only thing i could do was call 9-1-1 and call fire department and beg them to come as fast as they could.”