Owners and residents react after fire rips through Wasaga Beach motel

Wasaga Beach’s Villa Nova, a two-storey motel at Beach 1, caught fire late Monday night causing extensive damage.

A motel located in Beach Area 1 at Wasaga Beach was heavily damaged by a fire overnight.

Brian Konrad, a Wasaga Beach resident, captured the fire on his cell phone just before he went to bed at midnight.

“You could see all the lights and stuff - the flames going up high,” says Konrad outside the motel on Tuesday.

The fire department says fire spread through the Villa Nova motel quickly. The cause of the fire is still unknown but damage has been estimated at about $2 million.

“Upon our arrival, there was a large amount of flames already protruding from the roof line. We immediately set up a defensive attack,” says Craig Williams, Wasaga Beach fire chief.

It took crews about three hours to bring the fire under control.

Investigators were back on scene Tuesday trying to determine why the fire started. Initial reports suggest it may have started on the second floor of the motel. The fire marshal has been notified and crews will spend the next few days sifting through the building.

”It starts on the outside. It’s the inside delayering and picking through debris and trying to find some reason of why this happened,” says Kris Allary with the Wasaga Beach Fire Department.

Tony Torado, the owner of the motel, says the it’s been in his family for the past 55 years. At this point, he’s not sure if he will rebuild or not. He noticed the flames around midnight and he was one of four people able to get out of the burning building safely.

One firefighter received minor injuries while battling the fire. Crews were able to prevent it from spreading to nearby businesses.

Pedros is one of those businesses right next door.

Dean Prezio says his family once owned the burned building and got a call from a friend telling him about the fire.

“It was very, very scary. My heart stopped and I jumped off the coach and away I went back in my truck all the way to the beach,” says Prezio.

Many people came down to the beachfront today to see the damage up close.

“It’s really unfortunate, says Judy Gilbert, a Wasaga Beach resident. ”I said this is part of Wasaga Beach from history that is no longer here anymore so it’s kind of sad.”

The fire department says there were working some alarms in the motel and want to use this as a reminder for all property owners to regularly check their alarms.