Some Old Montreal residents’ cars were trapped for almost two months after deadly Oct. fire

Some Old Montreal residents had their car trapped in an underground garage, after a fire ravaged a building on Oct. 4 and left behind rubble in the driveway.

Two people were killed in the fire — a mother and daughter from France. Two men, aged 19 and 20, were charged with second-degree murder and arson following the incident.

One Friday, resident, Romain Prudhomme, was finally able to drive his car.

“It’s a huge relief, having the cars back,” said Prudhomme.

“Cars have been stuck in the garage for two months — absolutely no news from the city,” he added.

Prudhomme said he had issues in contacting the city.

“When you reach out to them, they say, ‘talk to the firemen.’ Then you go to the firemen, and they say, ‘talk to the city.’ You write back to the city, ‘we’ll ask this department, we’ll ask that department.’ At the end of the day, you don’t hear anything from anyone. So, you really feel abandoned in a way.”

According to Prudhomme, he was accompanied by the fire department a few days after the incident, but then he never heard back from anyone, including when his neighours tried reaching out to their city councillor.

“The city had closed the area and essentially said, like, no one can pass because the wall might fall, and we don’t want it to fall on someone,” he said.

Over 50 calls were made with no answer ever, despite multiple voicemails and asking to call back, until we finally write formal letters. And then, you get to call back to say sorry, we can’t do anything, and we have no idea.”

He said the City passed the responsibility onto the building’s owner — Emile Benamor – who also owned the Old Montreal building that burned in March 2023 and left seven people dead.

Prudhomme said it wasn’t until he spoke out against the situation, in a report with Le Journal de Montréal, did things change.

The construction company in charge of the site came to remove the rubble on Thursday and finally deemed it safe enough to pass through.

“I think it’s just incredible that it has to go through the press for things to actually get done,” he said.

Although his car is now out of the garage, Prudhomme said that his condo, along with two others must be completely redone. They were the closest units located to the burning building and the fire department opened the walls due to the smoke.

“There’s finally something that’s moving. I feel like [we’re] getting closer to the end of the tunnel, and I don’t think we see the light just yet, but at least it’s getting closer to that,” he explained.

He also noted that his condo would be getting smoke treatments soon.

Prudhomme said that he doesn’t have a timeline on when he’ll be able to return home – but he said he’s glad he can at least drive his car again.

“We’re going to be able to do some of the activities that we weren’t able to do like leaving Montreal. So, yeah, it’s going to be another step back towards normal life, right?”