Electrical overload sparked deadly rooming house fire: police

An electrical overload appears to be the cause of a fire in a Calgary rooming house that killed two men.

There were eight suites inside the two-storey house in the 1800-block of 1st Street N.W. but the structure was only zoned for a single family, said Calgary police spokesman Kevin Brookwell on Thursday.

Two men were killed in the fire on July 31, while five others managed to escape.

"The belief is that the wiring system wasn't updated to accommodate eight suites, so you have an older home that's zoned as a single family residence that now has eight separate suites," said Brookwell.

"And when you do that, you have eight separate fridges and other electronic appliances and the belief is that the electrical system just overloaded because it was unable to handle that additional load."

One of the rooming house tenants, who was working when the fire happened, told CBC News that the news doesn't surprise him.

"When I turned on the microwave, the colour would go out on my television. We kinda knew that, old house, knew the landlord didn't want to put any money into it," said Chuck, who didn't want his give his full name.

There was only one smoke detector in the basement of the house, even though city bylaws said there should have been three.

The city says it was unaware of any problems because it didn't receive any complaints.

In addition to an ongoing probe by the fire department and police, the Calgary Health Region was also investigating whether the building conformed to safe housing guidelines.

The owner of the rooming house, who lives in a $2 million home in Signal Hill according to land titles, did not return calls to CBC News.