Winnipeg police are investigating an overnight fire in a parking lot which destroyed vehicles that belong to a transportation company providing services to people living with disabilities.
The Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service responded to the fire near the intersection of Wall Street and Richard Avenue in the city’s West End around 12:45 a.m. Tuesday. When crews arrived five vehicles were engulfed in flames.
The vehicles are owned by Blueline Transit. The company’s fleet supervisor said when he passed by the parking lot Monday afternoon everything seemed fine. That all changed when he got a phone call about the fire.
“I’m still shocked,” Kunal Kohli, Blueline’s fleet supervisor, told CTV Winnipeg. “These are the vehicles we use once in a while, here and there, this is our parking lot, we just lost like four of them right away.”
A number of vehicles, including Blueline Transit vans, blackened from fire damage could be seen Tuesday.
Fire officials haven’t released a cause.
Police are now investigating the fire.
The City of Winnipeg said none of the vehicles damaged were contracted to provide Transit Plus service.
On its website Blueline Transit said it has buses and vans, some of which are wheelchair accessible and can be rented with or without a driver.
Kohli said while the damaged vehicles are backups, losing them to fire could still cause service disruptions.
“If something breaks down, we have to find out how to manage 24 people right away, so it’s a bit hard,” said Kohli. “We need buses here and there because they break down and stuff, so these were our backup buses. We’ll see how it goes.”
So far no service disruptions have been reported.
No one was hurt and a damage estimate isn’t available at this time.
Kohli said the company has insurance on the vehicles.
