One dead in fire at building in Ottawa’s south end

Cory Hilliard had just headed to bed early Sunday morning after watching a late movie with his girlfriend and adult daughter, when they started to smell smoke.

At first they weren’t too concerned because their upstairs neighbour, who was also a tenant, had warned them he would be burning documents and it might get smoky inside. Hilliard rented the basement apartment and their neighbour lived upstairs in the single-storey rural south Ottawa home.

But when the smoke got worse and Hilliard’s girlfriend, Kathy Grosse, began to have trouble breathing, they knew something was wrong. She went upstairs to check and yelled down to Hilliard and his daughter to get out because the house was on fire. She said smoke was pouring into the basement by then and the carbon monoxide monitors were ringing so she was terrified they wouldn’t hear her or couldn’t get out.

“I kept screaming to them that the house was on fire.”

By the time they did, the house in the 5000 block of First Line Road near Manotick was fully engulfed in flame. Their upstairs neighbour, a man in his 50s, was unaccounted for.

Hilliard said the stairwell from his basement apartment to the outside door was filled with smoke. As they saw the extent of the fire, they realized thumping sounds they had been hearing were parts of the ceiling hitting the floor as the fire spread.

Hilliard said they were convinced their upstairs neighbour was still in the house because he wasn’t outside, but worried he could not survive.

“It was fully engulfed. There was no running into it, no hoping to save him. If he was in there, he was not alive anymore.”

Ottawa Fire Services confirmed Sunday that one person died as a result of the fire that began shortly after 2 a.m.

In a statement, public information officer Nicholas DeFazio said firefighters located the victim inside at about 2:59 a.m. and brought him outside where they began treating him. Paramedics said he was taken to hospital in critical, life-threatening condition. DeFazio confirmed he later succumbed to his injuries.

Early Sunday, firefighters were still working on the building extinguishing hot spots. A fire services investigator was also on scene Sunday “and will be supporting the Ottawa Police and Ontario Fire Marshal with their investigations,” said DeFazio.

Hilliard, Grosse and Hilliard’s daughter spent hours being treated and monitored by paramedics at the scene for smoke inhalation and were later released. Later, Grosse said, the fire marshal told them if they had waited another 15 seconds to get out, they probably wouldn’t have made it.

Later Sunday, they headed out to buy some new clothes to replace the smoky ones they were wearing. Hilliard said they lost everything in the fire.

Hilliard, who teaches computer science at Algonquin College according to his LinkedIn profile, said he didn’t know his upstairs neighbour well, although they had lived in the same house for a dozen years.

He was friendly, but quiet and mostly kept to himself, Hilliard said. He said his neighbour was a welder and machinist who built prototypes and more than once had told them he had to burn documents associated with plans for those prototypes. Hilliard said he didn’t say much about what he was building.

Both Hilliard and Doug Dods, who lives next door, said his neighbour liked to garden. Dods said he would sometimes bring him produce.

Grosse described him as someone who was very private with a big heart.

“He had an incredible green thumb and would grow all this produce and donate it,” she said. “He would often leave a full bucket of produce for us.”

The Sunday morning fire is the second fatal fire this week in Ottawa. The investigation continues on a fire that took place at 221 Castlefrank Road early Tuesday morning. An elderly woman was rescued from the fire, but one occupant died.

Friends have set up a GoFundMe for Hilliard at:

www.gofundme.com/f/help-cory-rebuild-after-a-devastating-fire?utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet&utm_content=undefined&utm_medium=copy_link_all&utm_source=customer&utm_term=undefined