Fire tears through homeless encampment

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This article was published 01/10/2019 (1915 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Half a dozen people escaped serious injury after a fire broke out at a homeless encampment under the Osborne Street Bridge Wednesday morning.

“Everybody’s fine,” said one of the residents, who goes by Granny and didn’t want to give her name or age.

The spry, elderly woman who is the group’s matriarch, said one of the young women living there suffered minor burns to her hand.

“The tent was melting on her fingers,” she said. “The paramedics treated her. She has little blisters on her hands. She’s fine.”

Someone knocked over a candle, and the fire quickly spread, with thick smoke filling the area, Granny said.

Large clouds of heavy black smoke billowed out from under the bridge during the morning commute. A woman who contacted a Free Press reporter said homeless people at the scene were crying and asked her to call 911. One of them told her a resident of the encampment accidentally knocked over a candle while sleeping, she said.

“Unfortunately for them, they also had Roman candles and (other) fireworks in their camp, which is why there were explosions,” she said.

The City of Winnipeg said fire crews were called about 7:43 a.m. and had the blaze under control by 8:09 a.m. The cause of the fire is still under investigation, and officials couldn’t immediately confirm fireworks were involved.

The fire destroyed half of the shelter residents had set up under the bridge. A tent, kitchen chairs, cooking implements, a broom and carpets on the muddy river bank remained next to the charred ruins.

Granny said her belongings at one end of the encampment under the south side of the bridge were untouched by the fire.

“I was at the edge,” she said.

That wasn’t the case for one of her cohabitants, who said he lost what little he had.

“It’s just stuff,” said the man, who wanted to be identified only as Billy.

Loss is nothing new to him.

“I’ve had a rough five years,” the 43 year old said. He’s lost his family, his marriage and, in recent months, 87 pounds after his cancer returned. Billy said he’s grateful to be living with Granny and the Osborne Street Bridge group in a safe place where everyone is respected.

“It’s Granny’s rules. Nobody ever goes without. There’s a sense of camaraderie. We stick together,” Billy said.

The half-dozen people living under the bridge are usually up at daybreak, Granny said of their routine Wednesday morning before returning to the scene of the fire.

She had gone to a nearby shelter and was given a hot drink, a coat and socks.

After the fire crews had cleared out, workers from Main Street Project arrived. One, who said he couldn’t comment to the media, noted they regularly check on the people living in tents by the river.

“We’re here to help,” he said.

Within 24 hours of the City of Winnipeg receiving a call about an encampment, Main Street Project’s van patrol team investigates the public safety of a site and the safety of the individuals living in it. The patrol team’s involvement comes after advocates for the homeless criticized a plan by the city earlier this year to contract the removal of bulky waste from temporary encampments. That plan was scrapped.

Granny said she’s not sure what she’ll do now but can guess what will happen: “They’ll make us move,” she said.

She is adamant she doesn’t want to go to a shelter, but said she is not going to fret about it.

“You can’t worry about everything, you’ll make yourself sick,” she said, while sipping a hot drink, clutching a fleece blanket and smoking a cigarette.

Billy doesn’t want to go to a homeless shelter, either.

“It’s a bed in a room full of beds. Everybody is out for themselves,” he said. “I don’t feel safe.”

A National Poverty Advisory Council member said the charred remains of Billy and Granny’s camp should be cleaned up and the inhabitants allowed to stay.

“I really feel that moving people and their domiciles is wrong,” said Al Wiebe, chair of the Lived Experience Circle, who sits on the National Poverty Advisory Council.

Wiebe knows homelessness first hand. He went from earning a six-figure salary in his 20s to living in an old Mercedes off Higgins Avenue in his 50s. Now in his 60s, Wiebe is doing advocacy work and volunteering. He applauds the Main Street Project’s patrols and said he knows Granny, and that she’s responsible. He respects her wishes about where she wants to live.

“Live and let live. Let them be,” said Wiebe. “I really think if they get moved into housing it’s going to fail. They don’t want to be there anyway. Fires happen in apartments, too.”

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca

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— Jordyn Lerner (@JordynLerner) October 2, 2019