‘People are going to die’: Halifax tent camp fire clouds morning commute, stirs worries for homeless people’s safety

The bottom of the overpass was scorched black.

Below it, a microwave sat in the middle of charred remains: a couple of burned bikes, a mound of sneakers and a ragged tent. 

A fiery explosion rocked one of Halifax’s homeless encampments just before 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday. A video of the blaze circulated on Reddit. The dramatic footage showed towering flames and thick clouds of smoke coming from below a ramp off Barrington Street, near the Angus L. Macdonald Bridge.  

A man who lives at the encampment said he woke up to a blast that shook the ground. The man did not want to be identified. He said he once served in the military and said the explosion sounded like a grenade.  

He said when he looked out of his tent, he saw flames shooting at least six metres high, wrapping around the Barrington Street ramp overhead. The man said the fire trucks arrived in about 10 minutes and put out the blaze in a couple of minutes. He believes the fire was deliberately set.

SaltWire also spoke to man who lost his tent in the blaze. He did not want to be identified, either. He wasn’t at the encampment when the explosion happened. At the time, he said was getting breakfast at the Brunswick Street Mission. He had barely slept, not because of the cold but because people were making noise around his tent all night. 

“When I came back and saw the burned-out microwave, I thought what the hell?” 

During the night, he was using two space heaters to help keep warm. Halifax Regional Municipality provides power to people in encampments by supplying extension cords. A melted extension cord sat on the ground next to where the fire had burned.

Halifax Fire Deputy chief Dave Hall said crews found the fire well underway. 

“All the contents around them also burned,” Hall said. “There was no one around the area, so there were no injuries.” 

He said five tents were destroyed.  He said the department has no idea what caused the fire, “because there is nothing left to look at.” 

He said there was no obvious source, such as portable barbecues or heaters. 

Another man who lives under the ramp said he’s worried that the city is neglecting the encampment. He pointed to two piles of garbage. Each contains a couple of dozen garbage bags. He said it’d been more than three weeks since anyone came to pick up the waste. 

A woman who lives near the encampment says she’s worried about the city’s growing homeless population. The woman asked that we use only her first name, Sarah. She arrived at the encampment a couple of hours after the blast, with containers of chicken soup for people living there. She says the city and province have been working to get people out of the weather but need to do more. 

“It’s ’s getting cold, and people are going to die,” said Sarah. “We have empty churches and office spaces that could be converted to temporary shelters. Why are we not opening them up?”

This isn’t the first such fire. Halifax Fire says its crews responded to a fire at a homeless encampment Nov. 12 in Dartmouth.

 – With Ian Fairclough