This is what an 'incredibly difficult' heat wave was like inside one of Canada's densest neighbourhoods

This is what it was like in a Toronto neighbourhood where 30,000 people live during a scorching heat wave.

In the eye of a scorching heat wave, the water suddenly turned off in a Toronto apartment building.

“The whole 13 hours we didn't have water,” Breshna Kayoumi, a longtime resident of 375 Bleecker Street, northeast of Toronto’s downtown core, said. “It’s like the people in community housing don’t count as human.”

On Wednesday night, the mother of five sourced a hose around the side of the building and hustled with jugs up and down 24 storeys in the elevator from 7:30 p.m. to 1:30 a.m.

Toronto Community Housing confirmed to CTV News that there was an “unexpected emergency” that cut the overall water supply for the upper floors of the building, overnight into the early hours of Thursday morning.

Outside, it was sweltering. Temperatures reached the mid-thirties, and felt even hotter with the humidity in Toronto, and across Ontario, prompting a five day heat warning from Environment Canada.

The feverish air felt thick, trapped in the concrete collection of buildings in one of Canada’s densest neighbourhoods – St James Town, where almost 30,000 people live, according to the city. Here, construction is constant, green space feels fleeting and air conditioning is a treasure.

Across the street from 375 Bleeker, the construction site of a 51-storey apartment building has temporarily taken over a park and reduced it to a patch of grass.