48-year-old man dies in fire at northwest Regina duplex

A 48-year-old man is dead after being pulled from a burning duplex in northwest Regina in the early hours of Friday morning.

 Flames were shooting out of the home when firefighters arrived to the duplex near the corner of Markwell Drive and Rink Avenue at 1:15 a.m.

A man was taken out of the home with critical burns and injuries. He was treated by EMS but died at the scene. His family was notified but his name has not been released

A faint smell of smoke lingered in the air late Friday morning as police and fire officials began investigating the cause. The windows were boarded up but one side of the roof was completely caved in with charred edges.

Neighbours say they slept through the fire.

“My daughter woke me up, she saw all the fire trucks, then we came outside and there was five fire trucks here,” explained Allison Styles who lives two houses down.

“It’s very sad, just terrible, that somebody lost their home. I didn’t know that somebody had died until this morning,” she said.

Styles said she never saw the person who lived in the duplex.

A woman named Jen lives in another duplex on the opposite side of the unit that burned. She declined to give her last name, but said she didn’t know anything about the fire until the phone rang Friday morning.

“Shocked because we woke up to a phone call saying, ‘are you okay? Is everybody okay’,” she recalled. “”There’s been a fire, we were told it was 374 and somebody had died’, and we’re going ‘okay, what happened?’ My family was all upset, thinking that something was wrong with us.”

The duplex unit closest to Jen’s wasn’t burning, because the fire had been contained.

“It’s sad, but with everything that goes on in that house, I wasn’t surprised,” Jen commented.

She said she had met the man who lived there and the people who lived right beside, she said there was a lot of drama in the house.

“It’s been a troubled house,” Jen said.

She declined to explain any details, only commenting that it wasn’t the safest house to live next door to with kids.

Regina Fire & Protective Services said the duplex was a total loss and are now investigating to determine the cause. The coroner will investigate the man’s death, and Regina police will investigate to see if there is a criminal aspect to the fire.

It’s now quiet on Markwell Drive after fire crews responded to a fatal fire early this a.m. #yqr pic.twitter.com/KGxXnY8lrt

— Courtney Markewich (@cjmarkewich) January 22, 2016

Difficult to see the damage, but you can tell flames burned through the peak of the home #yqr pic.twitter.com/5xYhfhCJpi

— Courtney Markewich (@cjmarkewich) January 22, 2016

You can see boarded up windows as police shine a spotlight on the home where a man died in a fire this a.m. #yqr pic.twitter.com/VAE7YhLGww

— Courtney Markewich (@cjmarkewich) January 22, 2016

Officers shine their spotlight on a home that was the scene of a fatal fire this a.m. #yqr pic.twitter.com/3TbazB3ah1

— Courtney Markewich (@cjmarkewich) January 22, 2016