ManitobaA Winnipeg man and his family have been left devastated and searching for answers after his garage and a vintage truck he has been restoring for years went up in flames on Sunday morning. Police investigating after fire broke out at a Riverton Avenue garage early Sunday morningCBC News · Posted: Aug 17, 2025 7:14 PM EDT | Last Updated: 3 hours agoA fire on Riverton Avenue in Winnipeg early Sunday morning left a vintage vehicle and a garage destroyed. (Submitted by Kevin Pike)A Winnipeg man and his family have been left devastated and searching for answers after his garage and a vintage truck he has been restoring for years went up in flames on Sunday morning. “It was six years he was working on it the whole time, it was bits and pieces, and he built it from the ground up,” Michelle Beaulieu said of her partner Kevin Pike. “It’s not just something he went and bought off someone and put a little work into. “He’s built this truck from nothing.”Around 1:44 a.m. on Sunday, fire crews responded to reports of a fire in a garage in the 300 block of Riverton Avenue, the City of Winnipeg said in a release. When they arrived, fire crews found two garages on fire with heavy smoke and flames coming from them. Kevin Pike and his partner Michelle Beaulieu have been left devastated after a fire destroyed their garage and a vintage Chevy truck on Sunday morning. (Gavin Axelrod/CBC News)Firefighters were able to get the blaze under control by 2:27 a.m. on Sunday morning, but the damage left in its wake was extensive. Pike said one of his teenage kids woke them up around 2 a.m., and told them the garage was on fire, but he was not expecting what he saw when he went to have a look.”I got up, I ran out here and grabbed the fire extinguisher expecting to put out a small fire, to come out and see the whole cab of the truck engulfed in flames,” Pike said. “And the whole front of the garage was engulfed in flames, so I ran back inside before anything, and then the truck exploded, because it had nitrous oxide in the box.”Pike says much of his livelihood was in the garage, including more than $90,000 in tools and equipment. He said he ran a business out of the garage as well. A vintage 1965 Chevy C10 truck he’d been working on for years was also destroyed, and Pike said he remained in shock on Sunday as he came to terms with the damage and what it would mean for him and his family. “It’s devastation,” he said. “I had everything I had into this truck, years of building it, and my whole livelihood in my garage.”A fire on Riverton Avenue in Winnipeg left a vintage truck and a garage completely destroyed. (Submitted by Kevin Pike)Pike is also concerned that he may not have the proper insurance to cover everything that was lost in the garage, plus his truck. “The truck is insured under regular insurance, not under collector’s insurance, so they are going to go by whatever the book value is, which is going to be maybe a couple thousands dollars,” he said. “So I’m probably going to have to argue in arbitration to get the real value of the truck, which is probably closer to $60K.”Police confirmed Sunday they are investigating the blaze, and Pike and Beaulieu said they both believe it could have been started by arson. “There’s nothing here that could just spontaneously light on fire,” Pike said. And if the fire was deliberately set, Beaulieu says she hopes more is done to crack down on crime in Winnipeg, which she sees as a growing problem. “Something needs to be done about this city, it’s getting just ridiculous, the crime in the city is out of control,” she said. No injuries were reported as result of the fire and no official details on damage estimates has been released. Police did not confirm the extent of the damage to a second garage they said was also on fire on Sunday morning.
Family devastated after fire destroys garage and vintage truck
