Iqaluit fire department points to heater thawing frozen pipes as likely cause of 5-plex fire

There will be no criminal charges following a fire that destroyed a 5-plexin IqaluitMonday night. Nunavut RCMP say they are not investigating the incident, althoughthe fire department is still looking into the cause of the fire.

The pipes in building 2217, owned by Northview REIT, had been frozen for more than a day, leavingtenants without running water.

A heater had been set up underneath the building to warm the pipes. Deputy Fire Chief Stephane Dionne says that likely caused the fire.

It's also likely a gasolinetank fuelling the heater was closer to the building than it should have been, he says, and atube bringing hot air to the pipesshould have been run from farther away.

Dionne says the fact that the building was eventually razed will not affect their investigation;firefighters arrived early enough on the scene and were able to assessthe situation. The fire department will send itsfinal report to Nunavut's fire marshal. The department is still interviewing bystanders and tenants.

First-floor tenant Gordon Higgins says he knew what was causing the fire right away. He saidonce he smelled smoke, he went outside and saw an orange glow on the snow underneath his apartment.

"I went into the crawl space, into the storage there, and removed some of the flamingo pink insulation, and that's when the flames and smoke just really started coming up," he said.

Higgins saidhe tried to douse the fire with an extinguisherbut was unable to, so he and his common-law partner Madeline Atagoyuk started knocking on their neighbours' doors.

"It's an old building, and where the fire started underneath the house, there's lot of insulation under there, [it] came out real quick, so I just told my common-law to get out, and we rushed out," he said."So we have our two dogs, and we have our health that's all we have out of that place."

His three boys were at their mother's place that night, but his son Noah Cooper-Higgins, 7, was devastated to lose his hockey equipment. Afamily friendhas donatedequipment to him.

Fighting fire in frigid temperatures

Firefighters responded to Higgins's emergency call around 11 p.m. There were 18 on the scene throughout the night, running three hoses on the building.

Dionne says the frigid temperatures caused problems, despite the department having the best gear available.

One firefighter suffered a sprained wrist when he fell on the newly formed "skating rink" created by the runoff water.

Walking cautiously on the ice slowed the firefighters down, Dionne says, as did their jackets once they became wet, frozen and stiff. In the evening's30 Ctemperatures, he said it takes five minutes for water inside a hose to freeze if it's not moving.

"If you dribble it a bit, the water's moving, it won't freeze, but sometimes ...we close the nozzle too fast."

He says even the high volume hose can freeze and on Monday night it did when they tried to attach it to another fire hydrant.

"We didn't have enough time or enough pressure to support that line," he said.

Buildings at higher elevation than the fire were without water becausefirefighters were using almost all available water pressure to battle the blaze.He added this would not pose a risk in the case of a second fire because firefighters can manage water usebetween two sites. The department also has an older model fire truck to respond tosimultaneous calls.

Keeping fire hydrants clear

But Dionne sees one problem easily resolved:clear access to fire hydrants, so firefighters don't have to dig them out in an emergency.

He says because most of the land in the city is leased, it's unclear whether a homeowneror the City of Iqaluit isresponsible for digging out the hydrants.

Dionne said he's in the very early stages ofworking with the city on a bylaw to make homeowners responsible.