The City of Montreal has suspended American Iron & Metal’s permit to operate after a major fire at the company’s Montréal-Est scrapyard burned Thursday for more than seven hours.
Piles of garbage and old vehicles burned at the site, while a thick smoke billowed and a strong smell of burning metal was prevalent. The fire emanated from a “pile of scrap metal,” the City of Montréal-Est said in an online statement.
Around 55 firefighters and 23 vehicles were at the scene at the height of the fire, Montreal’s fire department said. Firefighters were alerted around 5:20 a.m. to the blaze, which stopped burning around 12:45 p.m., spokesperson Annick Vaillancourt said.
No injuries have been reported.
Fire crews attempt to extinguish a fire that broke out at the AIM recycling plant in Montreal’s east end on Thursday, April 23, 2026. Evan Buhler / Montreal Gazette
In announcing it is suspending the company’s permit, the City of Montreal says American Iron & Metal has consistently emitted into the air higher-than-permitted levels of iron, arsenic and PCBs, a class of toxic industrial chemicals.
Regulations require the company to capture and filter toxic particulate matter, which the city said the company had not done, “despite repeated demands.”
“For the sake of protecting the air quality for Montrealers,” the city made the decision to suspend the company’s permit, it said in a statement.
Piles of garbage and old vehicles were burning Thursday morning in a major Montreal-East fire.
As of 6:30 a.m., around 55 firefighters and 23 vehicles were at the scene, Montreal’s fire department said.
A thick smoke billowed from the site of the blaze and a strong smell of… pic.twitter.com/DuQRPms3bV
— Montreal Gazette (@mtlgazette) April 23, 2026
In 2023, a major fire burned at American Iron & Metal’s scrapyard in Saint John, N.B. A New Brunswick task force later found safety shortcomings in the company’s operations, calling American Iron & Metal “an environmental, health and safety risk to Saint John, surrounding communities and their citizens.”
Air quality was affected in parts of the city, Santé Montréal deputy medical director Dr. David Kaiser said. By Thursday afternoon, air quality risks were mostly contained to the area surrounding the fire, he said, advising residents in areas with smoke to stay inside and close windows.
American Iron & Metal operates several sites in the Montreal area. The fire burned at a site mostly used for the storage of vehicles and scrap metal, Kaiser said, and tests have not detected toxic metals or PCBs in the air.
“We didn’t have anything specific out of the ordinary in that smoke,” Kaiser said.
Fire crews attempt to extinguish a fire that broke out at the AIM recycling plant in Montreal’s east end on Thursday, April 23, 2026. Evan Buhler
In October 2024, the city said it suspended American Iron & Metal’s permit to operate equipment that was emitting PCBs, but found that the site continued to exceed PCB levels.
The city says it threatened to suspend the company’s permit to operate the site in 2025.
After finding the company was emitting more than 90 times the permitted PCB level and over 23 times the limit for arsenic in 2025, the city says it began the process to suspend the permit in February of this year.
In 2024, the Montreal-based company pleaded guilty to charges related to the 2022 workplace death of 60-year-old worker Darrel Richards, also at its Saint John location, after an industrial saw injury caused Richards to bleed to death.
Fire crews attempt to extinguish a fire that broke out at the AIM recycling plant in Montreal’s east end on Thursday, April 23, 2026. Evan Buhler / Montreal Gazette