On a windy spring 2015 night, deadly smoke from a second-floor apartment flowed down a hallway and past a stairwell door left permanently ajar by a warp.

The door gap meant that residents heeding usual warnings to flee a fire down stairs, rather than in an elevator, ran into a stairwell that, according to a fire official, had become a “chimney.”

Firefighters found a woman in her 30s and her toddler son unconscious in the fifth-floor stairwell. On another floor, her husband also collapsed in the smoke.

The man emerged from intensive care, along with his son, but they had to bury the wife and mother whom friends say had recently joined him from their native Ghana.

The man lost his Canadian dream, and now the owner of the 2850 Jane St. highrise, south of Finch Ave. W., is paying a price for the warped door and other fire code offences discovered after the three-alarm blaze that sent four other people to hospital.

The Toronto-based numbered company that owns the building last week pleaded guilty in provincial offences court. A justice of the peace accepted a joint submission from the prosecutor and landlord’s lawyer for fines totaling $71,000.

A $50,000 penalty is for the stairwell door not latching properly. The remainder of the fine, to be paid within six months, is for not properly illuminating exit signs and having no records of emergency lighting tests, according to Toronto Fire Service.

A young woman who lives down the hall from the apartment where the fire started — from an unattended candle in a bedroom — recalled Monday hearing about the fire while out.

In a panic she called her mom, who was staying put because smoke had not filled her apartment, said the woman, who declined to give her name.

Asked about the appropriateness of the fine, she noted she sees the widower and his boy around the building and said: “I don’t know — life is worth more than money.”

The fine is significant but not the biggest penalty in Toronto history, said Deputy Fire Chief Jim Jessop.

Much of the fine relates to the warped door “that had direct results on the death in that fire,” Jessop said. He was not aware of any previous orders for the landlord to fix the door.

In line with recommendations from coroner’s juries, Toronto Fire Service is stepping up highrise inspections to prevent such deaths, Jessop said, adding “we are in a period of transformational change.”

Firefighters are inspecting highrises across Toronto, triggering charges when necessary, and writing “pre-fire plans” on how to fight blazes in specific buildings, with information such as location of the gas shut-off valve.

Specialist fire prevention officers are focusing on “vulnerable occupancies,” including retirement homes, hospitals, and TCH buildings, with a goal to have them all inspected by the end of this year.

“Over the next number of years all highrise buildings in the city of Toronto will be (firefighting) pre-planned,” Jessop said.

Fire offence convictions by the numbers:

3: Years in jail for criminal negligence causing death handed to a Toronto landlord who failed to heed fire safety orders before a 2011 fatal rooming house fire.

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$1,550,297: Fire code fines imposed on Toronto building owners in 2015

$1,464,929: Fire code fines imposed on Toronto building owners in 2014

300-plus: Number of Toronto building owners charged with fire code violations in 2016