Person pulled from Vanier Towers blaze dies of injuries
The person who was rescued from an apartment fire in downtown Hamilton last weekend has died of their injuries.
Their death marks the city's third fire fatality of the year, according to a press release from the Hamilton Fire Department.
Emergency services were called to 95 Hess St. S., between Jackson and Hunter streets, just before 2 a.m. Sunday. Arriving crews could smell smoke in the lobby and then found smoke seeping out from under the door of a seventh-floor apartment.
The call was upgraded to multiple-alarm, drawing resources from across the city to the 18-storey CityHousing Hamilton building, which is part of the Vanier Towers complex.
Firefighters searched the unit and found a person inside with severe burns. They were transported to hospital by Hamilton paramedics and then sent to Toronto's Sunnybrook Hospital in critical condition, according to a press release.
The Office of the Fire Marshal (OFM) was called in to investigate the cause, origin and circumstances of the fire, which originated in a bedroom of a seventh floor unit, according to spokesperson Sean Driscoll. The on-scene portion of its probe was completed on Monday.
In an email statement Thursday, Driscoll told The Spectator that the OFM had been made aware the victim had died and that thoughts are with the family and community."
The investigation into the fire is ongoing, Driscoll added.
The latest blaze at Vanier Towers is just one in a string of fires in the building over the last few years.
In June 2021, a fire ripped through a unit on the 10th floor of the Hess building, with both the apartment and balcony sustaining significant damage. There were no injuries reported in that incident.
Around a year earlier, in June 2020, a fire in a ninth-floor apartment in the same building left behind an estimated $10,000 in damages. No one was injured.
The OFM was called in to investigate both of those fires as well.
Fallon Hewitt is a reporter at The Spectator. fhewitt@thespec.com