North Edmonton residents displaced after lightning ignites house, apartment complex

CBC News

· Posted: Jun 20, 2025 9:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 3 hours ago

Some residents successful Edmonton's northbound broadside are displaced aft lightning struck a location and an flat analyzable Wednesday afternoon.

Around 1 p.m. MT, Edmonton Fire Rescue Services responded to a location occurrence adjacent 135th Avenue and 113A Street, successful the Kensington area. Minutes later, exigency crews besides arrived astatine an flat gathering connected occurrence adjacent 82nd Street and 144th Avenue, adjacent the Dickinsfield neighbourhood.

Fire investigators determined that lightning caused both fires, which were located conscionable 4 kilometres distant from each other.

"This is simply a spot of an antithetic condition successful that it caused a location fire, but it does amusement the dangers that tin beryllium posed by lightning successful general," said Todd Bate, a meteorologist for Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC).

A thunderstorm had blown successful earlier Wednesday, with the nationalist upwind bureau projecting that it could go severe. 

Alyssa Ironchild and Dallas Martin, who lived together connected the third level of the flat building, had concerns astir however aggravated the thunderstorm was getting.

Ironchild had taken out her telephone to grounds the storm, capturing what appeared to beryllium lightning striking the extortion of her apartment.

"As soon arsenic the lightning deed the building, the fume and everything conscionable instantly filled up each the hallways," she said.

"Trying to get retired … it was truthful terrifying. You could not spot thing successful the gathering hallways astatine all, it was conscionable truthful scary and it was truly hard to breathe."

Ironchild is thankful for a passerby who, aft witnessing the lightning strike, pulled implicit and helped evacuate immoderate of the residents.

"I was trying to spell to get my feline and I was conscionable crying. I couldn't find her," she said. "He told maine to spell retired and that helium would get her for me, and helium did."

Bate, of ECCC, said the agency does not presently support records of location fires started by lightning. But according to its astir caller statistic from 2019, on average, lightning kills 2 to 3 radical per year, and 180 lightning-related injuries are reported annually.

Wednesday's thunderstorm didn't conscionable the criteria to beryllium classified arsenic severe, Bate said, noting that determination was nary dense rain, hail, oregon beardown winds. 

But helium added that storms successful general can beryllium dangerous, adjacent if they aren't deemed severe.

"We'd inactive accidental that, erstwhile determination is simply a thunderstorm, the champion happening to bash is to caput inside," he said.

Bate noted that Alberta could spot much terrible upwind events successful the adjacent fewer years, based connected patterns the upwind bureau is seeing astir the globe.

Displaced resident still successful shock

Damages from the flat occurrence are estimated to scope up to $500,000, according to the Edmonton Fire Rescue Services. As for the house, damages totalled astir $30,000 and a canine surviving there, which did flight the flames, is missing.

In a connection to CBC News, a spokesperson for Mainstreet Equity Corp., the institution that operates the apartment, said that each the complex's residents are successful a hotel. They did not specify however galore people were displaced.

Ironchild and Martin, whose flat suffered occurrence and h2o damage, are now shifting their absorption to uncovering a longer-term accommodation.

"There's nary clip framework truly connected however agelong this is each going to take," Martin said. "But we did telephone Mainstreet and they're looking into it, and they're going to effort to assistance america arsenic champion arsenic they can." 

Ironchild said she's inactive successful shock.

"I couldn't judge what happened [Wednesday] due to the fact that you ne'er deliberation that thing similar that could hap to you," she said. "You spot it successful movies, right? And past erstwhile it happens to you, it's conscionable unreal."

Ultimately, though, Ironchild said she's just thankful that everyone made it retired alive.