Tilbury residents, business owners recovering after fire tears through downtown

CBC News

· Posted: Mar 25, 2025 4:55 PM EDT | Last Updated: 6 minutes ago

The proprietor of a acquisition store successful the historical downtown neighbourhood of Tilbury, Ont., says she's saddened by the harm caused by a monolithic occurrence that tore done the country connected the weekend.

Amy Cartier owns Kara's Rose Garden, which is 8 doors down from the gathering that burned.

"All the buildings are evidently precise old," she said.

"They're each connected truthful erstwhile determination was the fire, evidently a batch of the buildings adjacent to it had fume damage. The ones close beside it had the h2o damage. … It was beauteous bad."

LISTEN: Tilbury's historical downtown recovering from a fire, 3 families displaced

The occurrence began astir 7 p.m. connected Friday, according to a connection from Chatham-Kent Fire Rescue.

Nearly 60 firefighters rushed to conflict the blaze connected Queen Street North, which ripped done a enactment of businesses with apartments supra them.

Community stepping successful to help, United Way authoritative says

Nobody was hurt, but portion of the extortion collapsed, and the buildings were severely damaged by occurrence and water.

The occurrence displaced 3 households. 

An enforcement with the United Way said the displaced radical are presently surviving with different household members and are receiving assistance from the Tilbury Information and H.E.L.P. Centre.

"I was determination yesterday morning, and radical were already walking successful with acquisition cards conscionable wanting to assistance their neighbour," said Liam Giles-Hayes, the vice president of programs and strategical relations with the United Way.

"The Tilbury assemblage is truly rallying astir the families and businesses impacted."

The occurrence dispersed truthful rapidly that radical had small clip to drawback prized possessions earlier fleeing, helium said.

Now, overmuch of what they owned is destroyed.

Anyone wanting to assistance tin donate clothing, currency oregon market acquisition cards, helium added.

Cartier's concern was each smokey aft the fire, she said. But she has since reopened, and says a batch of radical person stopped successful wanting to talk.

"It seems similar everybody's benignant of retired and astir seeing what's going on," she said.

Downtown Tilbury already has different gathering that's been nether operation for a mates of years, Cartier noted, adding she hopes it won't beryllium agelong earlier the neighbourhood is looking vibrant again.

"Of people our downtown halfway does not look beauteous close now," she said.

"Nobody wants to look astatine a messiness of a downtown."