Really, really difficult — that’s how Justin Knapik, district chief with the City of Edmonton fire department, describes trying to fight a fire in a commercial building at 118 Avenue and 95 Street early Sunday morning.
Knapik said the call came in around 4:45 a.m. The temperature in the Edmonton area was about -33 with the wind chill.
The building where the fire broke out was home to the Avenue Trading Post pawn shop and several other small businesses.
Knapik said when the first firefighters arrived on scene the intensity of the flames and smoke prompted them to call for more resources.
“We responded by trying to get firefighters inside the building pretty early into the fire,” added Knapik. “At that point, they were pushed back from the intensity of the fire and we went to a more defensive strategy in order to try and keep the community and the other building safe.”
Knapik said the extremely cold weather added to the challenge of getting the fire under control.
Get daily National news
Get the day’s top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day.
“It’s incredibly hard not only on the equipment, but also on the firefighters that are here,” said Knapik. “We’ve been rotating crews out. So we’ve had quite a few crews coming throughout the morning in order to try and rotate out — so we have three hours or less of exposure to this extreme cold.”
The water that crews were pouring on the fire was freezing quickly — turning the building and much of the area around it into a block of ice.
“We have some hose that’s frozen into the ground,” said Knapik. “We’re keeping water moving just because as soon as we shut off the water, it immediately freezes up all the hose lines. So there’s a lot of difficulties that come with these extreme temperatures.”
A large area of 118 Avenue, between 91 and 97 streets, was shut down for several hours.
Knapik said there was nobody in the building at the time of the fire.
Nobody was injured and the cause has yet been determined.
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.