A three-year-old boy has died after a house fire broke out in a row of semidetached homes in Hamilton on Monday morning.
Crews arrived at the scene on Golden Orchard Drive shortly after 10 a.m. to find smoke pouring from a basement unit and flames shooting from the front windows, Hamilton Fire Department spokesperson Claudio Mostacci said.
Firefighters were told that a toddler was still inside and immediately went in to begin aggressive search and rescue.
“The conditions that the firefighters had to go into to locate the child were certainly very difficult,” Mostacci said.
Firefighters managed to locate and retrieve the child from the home. But despite their efforts and those of paramedics, the child succumbed to injuries sustained in the fire and was pronounced dead at hospital.
The boy was at home with an adult who was outside of the unit when the fire broke out, Mostacci said.
Neighbours told CP24 that a woman was seen trying to get back into the unit, but the smoke was too thick.
“They were dragging her away from the door and away from the street. She was distraught of course and yelling about her baby,” Neighbour Matt Yardley said.
He said firefighters rushed the boy out of the home when they found him, but he appeared unresponsive.
“After a while the firefighters came out with the boy and ran down the street to the ambulance asking for a ventilator,” Yardley said. “The boy was just full of black soot all over his body. That was about it.”
Yardley said the woman and child had only lived in the basement unit of the home for a few months. He said the incident has left neighbours shaken.
“It hits home. You figure this could happen to anybody at any time and that quick,” he said. “And it’s just sad to see that a young person at this age is gone.”
The fire was confined to a single unit and the cause has not yet been determined, fire officials said.
Investigators from the Office of the Ontario Fire Marshal are on-scene to investigate.
No other injuries were reported in the fire.
