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Ravitez Singh was in the basement of his home in Saskatoon when he started to smell smoke.
“I run upstairs and I see the kitchen is burning, like, the moment I went there, half of the kitchen was gone,” he said in an interview on Tuesday.
He ran upstairs to grab his sister and two other friends, and then they ran out of their Hampton Village home. They didn’t even have time to grab their shoes.
Singh, 23, is still in shock about what happened on Friday, when the home he was renting in the Hampton Village neighbourhood was one of four destroyed by an intense fire. A total of 21 structures were damaged.
He came to Canada from Punjab, India, three years ago with just two suitcases, and worked hard to support himself and send money to his mother back home.
“Now, it’s all gone,” Singh said in an interview at Da India Curry House in Saskatoon, where he and his three roommates are all employed.
“I lost everything — my clothes, my essentials, my laptop, my phone, most importantly, my documents as an immigrant … my passport, my visa, my work permit.”
Kapil Jaggi, who owns Da India Curry House, has been supporting the employees.
“They all are devastated, to be honest. They’re very traumatized. They’re not able to talk. They’re talking normally for some time and then they start crying,” Jaggi said.
Jaggi said the four employees, all immigrants in their 20s, were renting the house together and none of them had tenant insurance.
“As an immigrant, I wish there was a manual to life,” he said. “When you come here — these are the things you have to make sure you do.”
He said he got a call from one of them on Friday saying the house was up in flames. He asked them to put him on a video call.
“It took me 15 to 20 seconds to understand what I was looking at,” he said. “Nobody would ever imagine seeing their own house burning down to ashes.”
The Saskatoon Fire Department said on Monday that the cause of the Hampton Village fire has not been determined yet. Investigation is ongoing and nothing has been ruled out.
Deputy Chief Yvonne Raymer said it is the “most devastating” multi-structure fire Saskatoon has seen recently.
“We will be very factual and thorough before we give a cause and origin determination. At the end of the day, it may also be undetermined,” she said at a news conference Monday afternoon.
Raymer said weather conditions that day were perfect and aligned with what firefighters call the “30-30-30 rule”: temperatures above 30 degrees celsius, wind speeds above 30 km/h, and humidity below 30 per cent.
The fire started around noon and a structure was fully engulfed when crews arrived. The intense flames caused damage up and down the block.
Thirty-two firefighters, two aerial units, four engines and a rescue unit responded. Excavators had to be brought in to bring down the devastated buildings. Raymer said a drone was used to capture aerial photographs to assist in the investigation as part of a pilot project.
Fire destroys multiple homes in Saskatoon’s Hampton Village neighbourhood
May 29|
Duration1:25More than 30 firefighters struggled to contain a fire that ripped through Saskatoon’s Hampton Village on Friday. Several homes were destroyed, but no one was hurt.
Nightmares of fire
All four of Jaggi’s employees are now staying in an Airbnb that Jaggi said he has rented for them. He said he will cover the cost until they can find something more permanent.
“They’re seeing fire in their dreams. That scene is not going away,” he said.
And they lost everything.
“[One of them] doesn’t have a dad, he comes from a background where they did not have enough food growing up … so of course, even small things that they bought, were like a prized possession for them.”
The Sikh community in Saskatoon has been providing support and helping them buy essentials. Hampton Village neighbours have also shown up and have been helping out.
The fire department said that homeowners on the block were insured, and that emergency accommodation through the Salvation Army was offered to all those who were displaced.
Jaggi has launched a GoFundMe for his employees. Fundraiser pages have also been created for other residents who lost their homes in the fire.
