Apartment building burns at John and Cathcart

Firefighters expect to spend all night at a stubborn fire in a vacant apartment building at John and Cathcart.

The fire began shortly after 6 p.m. tonight in a ground-floor bedroom on the Cathcart Street side of the building (shown).

From there, the flames climbed to the second storey through "balloon" framing that has no firestops.

See balloon framing

This building poses the kind of challenge that makes firefighters particularly leery, because it has two false ceilings with no partitions, allowing flames to travel the full length of the building.

When SooToday.com was at the scene just before 10 p.m., firefighters were on the roof while flames were shooting through a window up the side of the building a short distance away.

Firefighters on the roof, 9:40 p.m.

No injuries have been reported so far, although officials at the scene expect it will not be an easy fire to extinguish.

"It's a slugfest," one firefighter told SooToday.com.

So far, there's no indication of the cause.

The building has suffered extensive smoke and water danage.