Still no timeline for residents to return after long-burning Thorncliffe Park fire extinguished

Nearly three weeks after it started, the most complex fire in Toronto's history is finally out, but residents of two buildings in Thorncliffe Park still don't know if they'll be back home for the holidays.

Crews had been battling the blaze at 11 Thorncliffe Park Dr. and 21 Overlea Blvd. since it started on Nov. 27. Officials announced Monday it had been extinguished, but in an update Tuesday, they said the connected buildings and the 408 units that were evacuated last month will have to be assessed for damage before people can move back in — and there's no telling how long that could take.

“There still is a great deal of work required to make the building safe for re-occupancy,” Kamal Gogna, the City of Toronto’s interim chief building official and the executive director of Toronto Building, told reporters at a news conference.

“Our focus is to make sure that when residents return, they return to their homes that are safe to live in.”

Third-party engineers hired by the buildings' property management company will now assess the damage and air quality, and report to the city on what's safe and what requires repairs, Gogna said. The city will then review the report for approval, at which point residents will return in phases depending on what work needs to be done, Gogna said.

But he said it's too early to tell how long that will all take, and units will be deemed safe for return on a case-by-case basis.

Most complex fire city has seen, says fire chief

The fire had been slowly burning combustible particle board placed in an expansion joint between the two buildings, and Toronto Fire Chief Jim Jessop said crews had to go through the walls of some units to access the source and ensure the fire was out, causing extra damage.

“This city has never had a fire this complex,” he said. Toronto Fire had to enlist the help of engineers of different backgrounds, he said, "to come up with new ideas to extinguish a fire we could not see” — a first for the service.

Jessop said that putting out the burning material, which he previously compared to a slow-burning cigar, was an unprecedented challenge due to its location and the way it was burning. He said fire chiefs from around North America have called him over the past two-plus weeks to ask about the fire, saying they'd never experienced "something as complex as this."

“There are absolutely lessons to be learned from this," he said, adding that Toronto Fire will conduct a review of the fire and the service's response.

Jessop declined to comment on the cause of the fire, saying it was still under investigation by Toronto Fire and police.

The city said earlier this month that 239 people from 119 households have been staying in 131 hotel rooms, with support coming from the Canadian Red Cross.

“We recognize how difficult this situation has been [for residents], especially the time away from their homes,” Jessop said.

Coun. Rachel Chernos Lin, who represents Don Valley West, said the past 18 days have been “an unprecedented period of anxiety” for residents, but the co-ordinated emergency response helped them through the uncertainty.

“There was also tremendous resilience and compassion and support for each other,” she told CBC Radio’s Metro Morning Tuesday, praising the work of the city’s fire service, Toronto Emergency Management, the Canadian Red Cross and The Neighbourhood Organization to help people displaced by the fire.