Fatal fire in west Windsor leaves 1 student dead, 5 injured

Windsor Fire and Rescue reports a19-year old man studying at theUniversityof Windsordied in a west-end house fire overnight Wednesday.

Five people were taken to hospital with smoke inhalation, though three of those cases were not serious.

Mehran Esfendiari lives next door. He said officers came inside and shouted for everyone to get out.

"It took them maybe halfhour to 45 minutes to take care of the fire and I sawthem about 10 minutes after bringing out somebody from inside the house," Esfendiari said. "It was really, truly horrible...this experience was traumatic."

He worried about the safety of his neighbours after seeing the flames.

"The first thought that crossed my mind was 'Is that person OK? or I hope he's OK'," Esfendiari said.

A neighbour across the street also saw the home in flames. Priyanaka Trivedi said she was woken up while the fire was still burning and fire fighters were on the scene. Trivedi said one of the girls in her house heard an explosion and she saw the whole house was on fire.

"It was scary," Trivedi said. "We could hear shouting from the people and then later on we saw them taking out one person also for a very long time they gave CPR."

The fire started on Rankin Avenue between Riverside Drive and University Avenue at 4:30 a.m. Wednesday.

Investigators with the OntarioFire Marshal officeare on the scene. They areworking to determine the cause of the fire.