Our condolences go to the family and loved ones of the couple who died in this fire, and to everyone in Killarney who lost their home on Monday night. What follows is an account of what happened, drawn from the Edmonton Police Service and Edmonton Fire Rescue Services.
An elderly couple died together in the same fire.
An 85-year-old man and his 82-year-old wife were both killed when fire tore through their north Edmonton apartment building on Monday night. He died after jumping from their balcony to escape the flames. She was one of two residents unaccounted for in the hours afterward, and Edmonton police confirmed on Tuesday that she had also died. Police have said the two who died were spouses.
The couple has been publicly identified as Major Singh Bhandal, 85, and Surinderjit Kaur Bhandal, 82.
How the fire started
Edmonton Fire Rescue Services were called at 9:19 p.m. on Monday, July 13, to a three-storey residential and commercial building at 13126 82 Street, on the corner of 132 Avenue in the Killarney neighbourhood. Businesses occupied the ground floor, with two levels of apartments above.
Police say a vehicle struck the back of the building, rupturing a main gas line and causing an explosion and fire that quickly threw thick black smoke over the north side of the city. Eleven fire crews responded, and a second alarm was declared five minutes after the first call.
A fire that took three hours to control
Edmonton Fire Rescue Services Chief David Lazenby described a difficult and dangerous scene.
The damaged gas main, he said, created a complex situation that had to be handled carefully to shut off safely, and it took roughly two and a half hours to isolate. That shutdown cut gas to around 1,800 customers in the area. The fire itself took crews nearly three hours to bring under control, which happened at 12:02 a.m. Tuesday. Firefighters worked through the night and into the next day putting out hot spots.
"The building has sustained extensive damage, with the main floor commercial spaces and upper floor residential suites heavily compromised," Lazenby said. That damage is why it took until Tuesday to account for everyone inside, and why investigators still can't safely enter parts of the building.
Who died, and who was found safe
Major Singh Bhandal died after jumping from a balcony to escape the flames. He was treated by emergency crews but died of his injuries at the scene.
Surinderjit Kaur Bhandal, his wife, was one of two people unaccounted for as crews worked. On Tuesday, police confirmed she had died, bringing the number of deaths to two. The second missing resident was located safe. With that, everyone who lived in the building has been accounted for.
In the days since, a memorial has grown outside the building. Among the tributes left there is a framed photograph of the couple together.
The people taken to hospital
Six people who had been inside the building were taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, along with the 62-year-old driver of the vehicle, who was in stable condition.
Every hospital in the Edmonton region was placed on standby for a Code Orange, the protocol activated when an incident threatens to produce more casualties than emergency departments can handle. Alberta Health Services later confirmed the Code Orange was never declared, and the standby was called off late Monday night. That it was contemplated at all reflects how the scene looked in the first hour.
35 people lived there
Thirty-five people lived in the 16-suite complex, with four business suites on the ground floor. Twenty-one residents are being helped by the Canadian Red Cross after losing their homes. Other residents were not in the building when the vehicle struck and have since been accounted for.
Why a vehicle hitting a building can be so deadly
The vehicle didn't destroy this building. The gas line did.
Natural gas service lines run along the outside of many older commercial and mixed-use buildings, and they aren't armoured. A vehicle striking one at speed can shear it open, and gas escaping into an enclosed space finds an ignition source quickly, a pilot light, an electrical spark, a hot surface. What follows isn't a fire that grows and gives people time to leave. It's an explosion, followed by a fire that's already fully involved.
That sequence is why residents on the upper floors had so little time, and why an 85-year-old man ended up on a balcony with no way down but to jump.
What comes next
Police are still investigating what led to the fire. They have not said why the vehicle left the road and struck the building, and no charges have been laid. The driver was among those taken to hospital.
The Edmonton Police Service is leading the investigation, working with Edmonton Fire Rescue Services. Police say they're still working out a timeline for when first responders can safely search the building, which is part of why the investigation will take time.
The neighbourhood left behind
For Killarney, a quiet residential pocket of north Edmonton, Monday night changed the shape of a block.
Twenty-one people are staying somewhere other than home tonight, their building heavily damaged and off-limits while investigators wait for it to be safe to enter. Around 1,800 households in the surrounding streets lost gas service for a stretch while crews worked to shut the ruptured main. Four ground-floor businesses were caught in it too. And at the centre of all of it, two neighbours who had lived long lives are gone.
The response has been the ordinary, quiet kind. Flowers and notes accumulating along a fence. A framed photo of the couple, set where people passing by can see it. Neighbours who didn't know them stopping anyway, because a thing this size happening this close pulls people toward it.
None of that undoes the loss. It's just what a neighbourhood does with one, while it waits to learn how the fire started and begins the long work of putting the block back together.
Sources:
Edmonton Police Service, media releases, July 14 and July 15, 2026 (release 26R061-1)
Edmonton Fire Rescue Services, statements from Chief David Lazenby
Alberta Health Services, Code Orange standby confirmation
City of Edmonton
Canadian Red Cross
Victim identification from public reporting
