Greater Sudbury Fire Services responded to a fire in a residential building on Whittaker Street at around 8 a.m. Tuesday morning.
The fire was confined to a two-storey brick building that neighbours said was empty. It is not known at this point if anyone was in the building at the time the fire began. The front door of the building was boarded up.
A huge plume of black grey smoke could be seen from a wide area of Sudbury. Hundreds of morning commuters on Elm Street, Regent Street and Eyre Street were slowed to a crawl as firefighters arrived to work on the fire.
Half a dozen fire trucks were on the scene along with units from the Greater Sudbury Paramedics and Greater Sudbury Police Service.
Firefighters appeared to be fighting flames in the attic area of the building, but there was also burning that occurred on the second floor and the first floor at the back of the apartment house.
While many neighbours gathered on sidewalks outside near the building, no one admitted to living in the building. One man said as far as he knew the building was not occupied.