A person is dead after a five-alarm fire ravaged a highrise near Jane Street and Steeles Avenue West in North York on Friday evening, forcing hundreds out of the building.

Flames and smoke seeped out of the 15-storey building, at 235 Gosford Blvd., home to around 700 residents, for hours as roughly 100 firefighters took turns attempting to tame the blaze. Nearly two dozen fire trucks were at the scene.

Police initially reported that no one was seriously hurt following the blaze. On Saturday morning, however, fire chief Matthew Pegg revealed a body had been discovered on an 8th floor balcony of the building after the blaze was put out at around midnight. Toronto police say they are treating the death as “suspicious.”

“I’d like to offer my condolences on behalf of Toronto Fire services to all the people who have been impacted as a result of this loss,” Pegg told reporters outside the building Saturday morning. “There were some units that we could not gain access to.”

“It was an extremely difficult fire for our staff to fight, that was coupled with the fact the elevators weren’t working,” Pegg said.

The person was found after 1 a.m., he said. Six residents were rescued and treated on scene, with one transported to hospital in stable condition.

Firefighters fought the fire from inside the building. The fire escalated quickly and the crew “encountered very significant fires on multiple floors and corresponding heavy smoke,” he said. Floors seven to nine took the brunt of the fire.

All residents in the building have been accounted for, Pegg said. Twenty residents are being housed at the nearby Driftwood Community Centre. The Red Cross and the Office of Emergency Management are in the area to assist those in need of shelter.

On Saturday morning, a steady stream of people brought food to the community centre to help the displaced residents. Strangers and friends came loaded with steaming take-out containers, water, and Goldfish crackers.

Gaya Siba said she really wanted to do something, so she brought a few cases of water and snacks. “It’s really hard,” she said, talking about the fire, the time of year and the frigid temperatures. Many well-intentioned donors were told food couldn’t be processed at the centre, but they could donate it privately.

Henrietta Obeng, who lives on the 14th floor of the apartment building with her parents said that her family ran down the stairs after they saw smoke rising near their balcony Friday evening. Obeng is 19 and has lived in the building since birth. Her family spent Friday night with friends. Standing outside the community centre, she said they don’t know when they will be allowed to return home.

Obeng says the building is a friendly place where “everybody knows everybody.” By Saturday, the news that a person had been discovered on an 8th floor balcony after the fire was put out was well known. Outside the apartment building, Inspector Jim Gotell, with the Toronto Police said there is no reason to believe there is any foul play or criminal activity involved with the death at this point.

“We called it suspicious because anytime somebody dies and we are not fully aware of the circumstances by which the person did die we have to conduct an investigation to make sure there is nothing criminal involved,” he said. The office of the fire marshal is leading the investigation, and Toronto Police and Toronto Fire are also involved as they try to determine what happened. As of Saturday afternoon, police have not been able to notify next of kin of the deceased.

Richard Derstroff, with the office of the Ontario Fire Marshal, said that the fire originated in apartment 808. He said during the initial assessment of the scene a victim was located on the balcony of that apartment. On Saturday, investigators were documenting the fire patterns on the outside of the building, and moving into their interior investigation.

The Ontario Fire Marshal’s investigation is ongoing. Structural engineers will determine if the fire spread through the ventilation system.

Chester Yim, a resident of the building, said he pulled into the garage of the building around 5:30 p.m., and messaged the family group chat to let them know he was almost home.

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A fire alarm sounded but he didn’t think much of it.

Three minutes later he was sprinting up 12 flights of stairs to the apartment where his wife and two kids, aged 8 and 11, had been told to wait on the balcony while smoke poured into the unit.

Yim, 31, had stopped by his parents unit on the second floor before going up to his family’s apartment.

He was there when he got a call from his wife in a state of panic.

“She said she had called 911 and they told her to remain in the unit,” he said. She told him they were on the balcony.

He ran down to the lobby, saw two fire trucks, firefighters and dozens of terrified people. Then he saw flames coming from the building. He heard that the fire might have started on the 7th or 8th floor.

“I just saw the flames. There was no time to mess around,” he said.

He didn’t think, he just knew he couldn’t leave his family stranded on a balcony.

“I had the ability. I just went up to get them,” he said.

He ran up the stairs through smoke that got thicker and thicker. He got into the unit and grabbed his family, half dragging his wailing eight-year-old daughter back down the stairs.

They got to his parents apartment safely though in a state of shock, he said in an interview from the second floor balcony at around 8:45 p.m.

“We are all here safe,” he said. “They’re OK now.”

With files from Ted Fraser and Katie Daubs

Ted Fraser is a breaking news reporter, working out of the Star’s radio room in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter at @ted_fraser.