'We will be homeless': Apartment fire victims face deadline
CBC
Following traumatic hours watching their home burn down in the early morning hours Tuesday, the tenants from 6 Elena Court in Charlottetown are hard up against a deadline to find a new place to live.
The 20-unit building, with about 40 residents, was completely destroyed.
Fire alarms went off in the building about 12:40 a.m. Tuesday. Most of the tenants were asleep.
Honey Thakur, a T3 Transit driver, lived in one of the apartments with his wife Yasmeen, a manager at Subway. They shared the space with Sandeep and Rajveer Kaur, two sisters.
Thakur said by the time he woke up from the alarms and people banging on his door it was too late to escape through the hallway.
"When I opened the door the fire is come in the apartment. I just closed the door and I broke the window," he said.
Sandeep Kaur was working a late shift at Taco Boyz, finishing at 12:30 a.m., and was returning home by taxi just as people were getting out.
"I was so scared. From far away I saw the building was burning, but I thought it was another building. But when I came near, oh my God, I saw it's my building," said Kaur.
"I just called my sister. I was not able to think what I should do. She picked up the call and said, 'We are out.'"
Kaur was left with nothing but her Taco Boyz uniform. Yasmeen Thakur said she grabbed their passports on the way out, but saved little else.
"We just saw our home burn down," Yasmeen Thakur said of the place they had all lived for two years.
"We did really hard work to make a home. Because it was an empty apartment, right? We did really hard work to make it home."
The Red Cross was quickly on the scene of the fire to support the victims.
The displaced residents were transported to a warm place where they could clean up and clothes were provided for those who needed them or cash was provided for them to buy clothes.
Aggressive patients and lack of security are making nurses feel unsafe in a rural Western Manitoba emergency union, says the Manitoba Nurses Union.
Saskatoon resident Delynne Bortis knew her commute to work Tuesday morning would be particularly difficult.
WARNING: This story contains details of abuse and intimate partner violence:
The amount of money it takes for people to earn a living wage has increased across the province, according to a new report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).
The new owner of Ontario steelmaker Stelco says his company "will not disappoint the people of Hamilton and Nanticoke," where the business's major facilities are based.
A Winnipegger is warning others about an intricate scam she says she almost fell for.
Fort William First Nation is opposing a planned redevelopment of the Ontario Power Generation's (OPG) 117 year old Kakabeka Falls Generating Station, which is located in their traditional territory.
A building that sits at the corner of Sussex Street and Brunswick Avenue has had many lives over the last century — being a church, a school and offices. Now it's set to become housing, at a time when the city sorely needs it.
A Waterloo, Ont., elementary school principal will be sentenced in the new year after pleading guilty to child sexual exploitation charges following a joint investigation that involved the London, Toronto and Waterloo police services.
Students at UPEI have let their student union know what they want from the province this fiscal year, and those priorities are reflected in a 2024-2025 advocacy document brought to the legislature on Wednesday.
Larger communities in the N.W.T. will soon see a boost in their territorial funding to maintain infrastructure and deliver services — like water and waste management — but the increase still falls short of what communities need.