North Bay — The North Bay Nurse Practitioner-Led Clinic is thanking the city’s firefighters who put out a downtown blaze two years ago.
Director Jaymie-Lynn Blanchard remembers the Dec. 20, 2019, fire quite vividly. Blanchard received the phone call at 1:30 a.m. and rushed down to the clinic.
“It was just a rollercoaster of emotions,” she said. “There was a lot of unpredictability (about) whether we could come back to our downtown site. And there were months of not knowing.”
The fire claimed four buildings and it took crews more than nine hours to extinguish the flames.
“There was one point where we thought if it got to this building, we were seriously thinking we would lose the rest of the block,” said fire chief Jason Whiteley.
The clinic suffered major smoke and water damage. The fire did spread to the upper portion of the building and was closed until Oct. 13, 2020. It continued operating at the Lakeshore Drive location.
Clinic staff presented the fire department with a photo of the blaze and a plaque thanking them for saving the building so they can continue taking care of patients.
“Our downtown clinic focuses on high-risk, marginalized patients in our downtown core,” said Blanchard. “We’re serving certain patients who have a hard time getting care in other places.”
Temperatures reached dipped to -35 as crews fought to extinguish the fire. One firefighter was taken to hospital with frostbite in his foot.
Whiteley said firefighters use the clinic fire as a review of firefighting methods on what worked and what didn’t work, should something similar occur in the future.
“No fire is the same because they’re so dynamic,” he said. “But if we can learn from it and see certain fire behaviour in buildings like this, it helps us better prepare.”
Since the 2019 fire, the downtown clinic has grown, accepting 900 new patients.
