Route links
- Local news
A fire that killed the former Dairy Queen on Wharncliffe Road South is being investigated as a suspicious fire, one of two that occurred Monday morning in London.
A former abandoned Dairy Queen location on Wharncliffe Road South in London was destroyed by a fire officials have deemed suspicious. Photograph taken on Monday 4 July 2022. (Mike Hensen / The London Free Press)
Content of the article
A fire that killed the former Dairy Queen on Wharncliffe Road South is being investigated as a suspicious fire, one of two that occurred Monday morning in London.
Content of the article
Firefighters arrived at a “fully involved” fire that advanced the vacant ice cream parlor around 5 a.m. Monday, the second fire in seven months. The store north of Base Line Road was also hit by a fire in December.
It is unclear what caused the most recent fire, but no one appears to have lived in the vacant structure, said fire department chief Colin Shewell.
“There are no utilities, no hydraulics or gas or anything in this building,” he said.
“At the moment, one of the contractors in our city has assured us. We will have fencing and climb it until the city building department determines the next steps. ”
London police are investigating.
No one was injured.
A couple of hours later, firefighters fought another fire, this time in an apartment building near Oxford Street West and Hyde Park Road. A tenant was displaced in the 7 a.m. fire at 85 Fiddlers Green Rd., But no one was injured. The fire, which caused $ 150,000 in damage, was also later considered suspicious.
The Dairy Queen fires were not the only ones in the Wharncliffe South area recently. An abandoned and dilapidated industrial building on an island in the south, at No. 10 Center St., caught fire on August 10, 2021, covering the area with toxic smoke and causing authorities to tell nearby residents to they would stay inside with the windows closed.
That fire, also considered suspicious, destroyed the structure. It had already been approved for demolition, after years of security commissions, as the building is in poor condition. He was eventually razed after the fire.