Fifteen Moose Jaw residents are still out of their homes after an apartment fire on Sunday morning.

Emergency crews were called to Crestview Co-Op, a 55-plus community, around 10:00 a.m. When they arrived, flames were already shooting from the north side of the building.

“(What) we call the west wing, it’s the worst effected,” said Ron Richards, one of the building’s residents.

The building was safely evacuated, but six people needed emergency food and clothing from the Canadian Red Cross and another nine needed to stay in a local church for the night.

“We were registering people and offering care and comfort,” Georgiana Shuring from the Red Cross told CTV News. “(We were) waiting to hear whether or not residents would be able to return to their home.”

The fire damaged 15 suites and the occupants still haven’t been allowed back in. They’re staying in hotels, or with friends and family.

“We’re hopeful to get everybody in, it would be nice ideally, by the end of the week,” Chief Rod Montgomery from Moose Jaw Fire Service said Monday. “But I don’t know the answer to that yet.”

Six suites are destroyed and those residents won’t be able to go home for months.

“Fortunately we’ve got an empty suite, so at the end of the month I’m going to move into that,” Richards said. “But, I haven’t talked to other people here, I really don’t know what they’re going to do.”

Meanwhile, the Red Cross said it will continue to help in whatever way it can.

“It’s a scary situation, people were shaken up,” Schuring said. “That’s where the Red Cross has a social well-being unit whereby we can assess and see if people need connecting with other forms of help.”

No one was injured in the blaze. The fire chief credited the building’s residents for practicing regular fire drills.

“They stayed on top of things and that paid dividends,” Montgomery said.

“The fire department has informed us that we have a very well-built building,” Richards said. “We have lots of good firewall protection and that’s what basically saved this end of the building. We’re really fortunate that way.”

The cause of the fire has not yet been determined and the investigation is ongoing.