The situation on Jarvis Avenue continues into the evening after an all-consuming fire.

Early this morning, the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service (WFPS) responded to a fire in a large commercial and industrial building at 274 Jarvis Avenue. Most of the building collapsed as crews fought the fire this morning.

WFPS Assistant Chief. Mrk Reshaur says, "As the building collapsed, it created a number of voids in the rubble and debris are continuing to burn in those voids. So what we do, is we go around the exterior perimeter of the building and knock the walls over inwards so there is no collapse hazard to people working on the scene.

"We're in the final extinguisher phase of this fire. ... We want to make the scene safe and we want to extinguish all the hot spots in the rubble."

WFPS says in a release, "Heavy machinery has been brought in and the remainder of the building is being demolished as the remaining structure is unstable and at risk of further collapse. Demolition will also expose hot spots for crews to extinguish."

Reshaur says, "We expect the smoke to continue into the evening. We're hoping to get this thing wrapped up this evening if not, early tomorrow. We will be staying on scene until all visible fire is extinguished."

Once the fire is deemed safe to leave, WFPS will return in regular intervals to monitor the scene and scan the area with a thermal imaging camera to determine if any hotspots arise again.

WFPS says, "This work is going to take time to accomplish safely. There will be ongoing smoke conditions throughout the afternoon. Residents in the smoke plume are asked to close windows to keep the smoke from entering their homes. As well, all air intakes bringing outdoor air into a home should be turned off."

The cause of this fire will be under investigation. No damage estimates are available at this time. Please note that roads in the area will remain closed until crews complete their work on scene.

Reshaur thanked all residents for their patience and their partners for their teamwork:

"We've been working very closely with our partners at Manitoba Hydro and the various city utilities to mitigate this incident - everyone has had to work really closely together. ...

"It's a success in that nobody was seriously injured and we managed to limit the damage to the adjoining businesses. Unfortunately, the building was very extensively involved in fire and we couldn't safely extinguish that so we had to move to an exterior offensive attack and keep it contained."