For years, the abandoned industrial complex on Ontario Street has been one of St. Catharines’ most visible unresolved problems. Newly obtained fire-service records now add a harder number to that unease: more than 55 separate incidents requiring a fire department response were documented at the former General Motors property between 2019 and March 2026.
The records describe fires, smoke calls, medical emergencies and repeated encounters with dangerous conditions inside partially demolished buildings. They also show firefighters flagging hazards and security concerns years before the City issued major property-standards orders in May 2026. The result is a sharper picture of a brownfield that is not only a redevelopment challenge, but an ongoing public-safety file involving emergency crews, nearby residents, municipal enforcement and environmental regulators.
A Seven-Year Emergency Record
The newly disclosed incident logs show that firefighters were sent back to the former GM lands again and again over a period of more than seven years. The Pointer, which obtained the records through freedom-of-information requests, counted more than 55 separate responses between 2019 and March 2026. The calls included reports of fire or smoke, open burning and medical emergencies. Fire crews frequently encountered small rubbish fires, and the records indicate that some involved wire being burned to strip plastic coating from copper. City officials have said the call volume has fallen significantly in more recent years, but they also acknowledged that the site presents unusual conditions and challenges for fire crews compared with many other vacant properties in St. Catharines.
Individual reports show why the number matters. In January 2019, firefighters investigating a call found below-grade openings containing roughly five to six feet of water and identified a fall and drowning hazard. In May 2021, after a smoke call, a Fire Prevention Office complaint was submitted because fencing was not secure and the building could not be secured. In April 2024, crews responding around 2:30 a.m. to an open-burn complaint stopped a search because the route to the suspected fire was described as treacherous and unsafe. Those entries turn the incident count into something more concrete: repeated deployments into a site where the emergency itself was only one layer of risk.
The Buildings Add Risks Beyond the Flames
The fire logs describe hazards that can complicate even a relatively small call. Crews noted hanging wires and debris, open elevator shafts, missing railings, unstable or deteriorated interior areas and numerous trip and entanglement hazards. In a conventional occupied building, firefighters can rely more heavily on known layouts, maintained exits and basic structural upkeep. At a partially demolished industrial property, those assumptions can disappear. A small rubbish fire can require crews to navigate broken surfaces, uncertain openings and compromised structures before they can even reach the source of smoke. That is consistent with broader firefighter-safety guidance, which treats vacant and abandoned buildings as high-risk environments because deterioration and unknown structural conditions can sharply increase the danger of interior operations.
The City has said its firefighters document known hazards and adjust their response accordingly, avoiding unnecessary risk based on the nature of each call. That distinction is important: the records do not mean crews entered every dangerous area or that every response involved a major blaze. They do show, however, that firefighters repeatedly had to make risk decisions at a property whose physical condition was itself part of the emergency. U.S. occupational-safety research on vacant and abandoned structures warns that such buildings can be structurally unsound and that deterioration may make collapse difficult to predict. Against that backdrop, the St. Catharines logs read less like a collection of isolated nuisance calls and more like a recurring operational hazard.
Security Problems Kept Becoming Fire-Service Problems
Many of the incidents also intersect with a long-running security issue. The former industrial buildings have attracted unauthorized visitors, including people seeking shelter, curious explorers and scrap hunters searching for recoverable metal. Fire reports and resident accounts have repeatedly pointed to gaps in fencing, open gates or other ways of entering the site. The 2021 fire-prevention complaint specifically noted that fencing was not secure and that the building could not be secured. When people can get into a deteriorated industrial structure, the risk is not limited to trespassing. It creates the possibility of falls, medical emergencies, accidental fires and deliberate burning of discarded materials or wire.
That helps explain why the eventual property-standards orders focused so heavily on access and physical hazards. The City’s May 2026 enforcement action required the owners to address openings that allowed unauthorized entry and to deal with deteriorated or unstable building materials. The owners appealed, and the City’s Property Standards Committee later dismissed the appeal while granting additional time for compliance. The larger point is that a broken fence or unsecured doorway at a site like this is not simply a maintenance issue. It can become the first step in a chain that ends with firefighters, paramedics or police being called into a dangerous building.
The Records Reveal a Gap in the City’s Complaint History
The new fire-service records are especially significant because they sit awkwardly beside statements made during the June 2026 property-standards appeal. At that hearing, the City’s bylaw manager said there was no formal complaint record regarding deterioration of the buildings before the complaint that triggered the May inspection. Yet the fire logs include earlier internal warnings, including the January 2019 report that identified a fall and drowning hazard and the May 2021 Fire Prevention Office complaint about insecure fencing and an unsecured building. That does not automatically prove the City ignored a formal property-standards complaint; different departments can classify and store calls differently. It does, however, raise a reasonable question about whether safety information moved effectively between municipal systems.
That distinction matters because enforcement often depends on how information is received and categorized. A fire-service call may be recorded as an emergency response, while bylaw staff may look for a separate complaint in a property-standards database. If the systems do not connect, a property can accumulate years of incident history without triggering the kind of inspection that a neighbourhood resident might reasonably expect. The City has defended its staff and says it has worked on environmental protection, trespassing and safety concerns at the site since 2020. The newly released logs do not erase those efforts, but they make the timeline of municipal awareness more complicated than a simple narrative that there were no concerns before 2026.
Fire Risk Is Only One Part of a Larger Brownfield Problem
The former GM lands are not an ordinary vacant lot. The City describes 282 and 285 Ontario Street as a roughly 20-hectare brownfield whose industrial history stretches back decades. General Motors and related operations used the properties from 1929 until the plant closed in 2010, and the lands were sold in 2014. Because the site is intended for eventual mixed-use redevelopment, environmental assessment and remediation are central to what happens next. The City says more sensitive uses cannot proceed until contamination has been evaluated and the required Record of Site Condition or risk-assessment process has been completed to provincial standards. Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks continues to monitor the property and has conducted sampling over time.
The environmental concerns also overlap with the physical deterioration described by firefighters. In May 2026, a private laboratory analysis commissioned by The Pointer detected chrysotile asbestos at 0.5 per cent in a soil sample collected from the property. A single sample cannot establish conditions across an entire industrial site, but the finding added another issue to an already complicated remediation file. Earlier environmental work had also identified contaminants requiring evaluation, while the City has published years of provincial monitoring information involving stormwater and dustfall. For firefighters, contractors and anyone legally working on the property, that means the risk picture extends beyond flames and falling debris. Demolition, cleanup and redevelopment must account for what may be present in the remaining structures, soil, groundwater and dust.
The Fight Has Moved From Emergency Calls to Orders, Court and Redevelopment
The City’s most consequential enforcement step came on May 22, 2026, when property-standards orders were issued for 282 and 285 Ontario Street after inspections tied to safety and security concerns. The owners appealed. The Property Standards Committee ultimately upheld the orders but granted a 120-day extension to carry out the required work, including repairing, securing or demolishing unsafe structures. The dispute then moved to Ontario Superior Court, where the owners are seeking to have the orders rescinded or to obtain a longer compliance period. A hearing that had been expected in August was adjourned to September 17, keeping the immediate future of the buildings unresolved.
At the same time, St. Catharines is trying to plan for what comes after the derelict industrial landscape. The City has proposed a site-specific Community Improvement Plan covering 282 and 285 Ontario Street, with a legislated public meeting scheduled for September 14. The broader Ontario Street planning process envisions substantial redevelopment along the corridor over the coming decades. That creates two parallel clocks: one focused on making dangerous buildings secure now, and another focused on transforming a major brownfield over many years. The fire logs show why the first clock cannot be treated as secondary. Whatever ultimately rises on the former GM lands, emergency crews and nearby residents are dealing with the property that exists today.
