North Bay Fire Chief Jason Whiteley tells BayToday that the Main St. fire early this morning has been declared "suspicious" and has sent one firefighter to the hospital with frostbite injuries.
"Right now we're treating the fire as suspicious," said Whiteley, who would not elaborate on the reasons at this time. "I can't go into that right now, but we are treating it as suspicious until we can determine otherwise."
As for injuries, "We've had one firefighter taken by EMS to hospital for frostbite injuries."
The fire was under control before nine. The alarm was called in just after midnight.
"We've been here since 12:30 this morning," said the Chief, noting five or six tenants of the building have been left homeless.
"We were able to stop the fire where Vic Fedeli's office is and where the Cedar Tree Restaurant is but everything in between has been consumed in the fire."
See: Major downtown fire
The minus 23 temperatures had a huge effect on the effort to fight the blaze, including the frostbite injury.
"We've had our equipment exposed for nine hours now and with all the moisture from our breath, our airpacks begin to freeze up, it's hard on the hydraulic equipment on the ladder trucks, trying to get the trucks all refueled because they been out here for so long. One fan is just covered in ice from the overspray and the moisture in the air from the hose lines."
Whiteley says firefighters initially tried an interior attack because that's always the best way to get a hold of a fire.
"Our guys went into the building but there was too much fire to safely attack it, so we went out and went defensive which means we're basically just pouring water into the inside but we were really concentrating our efforts on finding the location where we were going to make the stop so the Fedeli building and the Cedar Tree Restaurant is where we made our stops and conceded the buildings in between."
The 100 block of Main and Oak east streets will remain closed for the most of today.
Thanks to Sherry Shorey for submitting this video.
