Hope fire crews battled a residential structure fire on Old Yale Road last night, three people escaped the blaze.
Ten firefighters worked throughout the night to contain the fire at 63986 Old Yale Rd. The three residents and pets in the home escaped unharmed but lost all of their belongings.
“I don’t even have socks. I have nothing. Everything is gone,” said Gary, a resident of the bottom floor of the house identifying himself only by his first name. “Everything is just gone.”
Wednesday morning Gary and his neighbours salvaged what he could from the home gutted by fire. The top floor of the building was occupied by a woman and her son, neighbours Mike and Edward Ryder who took the pair in during the fire say it was a traumatic experience.
“It’s so sad. The kid came in, we just put him on the couch and let him watch some T.V.,” Mike said. “But he was looking out the window, he’d start to cry every couple of minutes.”
Mike said the fire spread very quickly through the home and smoke enveloped the street. By the time firefighters came to the scene he said they were unable to go indoors and fought it from outside.
Around 3:30 a.m. the mother and her son were taken to a place to stay by emergency social services with the clothes they escaped in. Edward gave the son a pair of his size 11 shoes and the mother had clothing on donated from Mike.
“It’s sad for them right. I don’t think they had much to begin with,” Mike said. “When you have nothing, that’s when it really hits you.”
Edward estimates the fire department showed up around 1:30 a.m. Crews battled the blaze for six hours, Fire chief Tom DeSorcy stated in an email.
“It was a stubborn fire in that that access was difficult and the structure became unstable. We were able to contain it to the building of origin and prevent its spread to nearby structures that were very close by,” DeSorcy stated.
During the night fire crews also attended an accident involving a semi-truck that went off the road and was leaking fuel, DeSorcy stated he believed the driver was not injured.
The cause of the fire is not known and remains under investigation, the department stated Jan. 10.
