Early morning fire causes $300,000 damage Update

City fire crews were called to an early morning fire Friday that gutted a Larocque Road.

“The call came in at two minutes after 12 last night and we had trucks on scene in eight minutes,” explains Chief Fire Prevention Officer Randy Vezina.

“They arrived to find the south half of the building involved and it had already breeched the roof so we had no choice but to do a defensive attack ... and play water on the garage to protect the garage from being engaged from the radiant heat.”

Vezina confirms that no one was home at the time however there were family pets in the house.

“Fire dispatch did a great job in tracking down the property owner in Barrie and it turns out that she was in Toronto since last Sunday with respect to family needs and we were able to determine that she and her 15-year-old son were not in the building,” he states.

“No one was in the building at the time.”

“I know for a fact that the young 15-year-old boy had a lizard and that was lost, and I’ve heard that there may have been one other animal that we will confirm that later on today.”

Vezina says that the Ontario Fire Marshal’s office was contacted and based on the information provided in turn requested North Bay Fire Prevention to conduct the investigation and will not be attending.

“What we are doing now we have brought in the excavator to first of all knock down a 2-story brick chimney that was of course unsupported with all the structure gone and we didn’t want it falling on any other crews or insurance people so we’ve knocked that down.”

“Now we are excavating the cavity of the building just to do our due diligence to insure that there are no fire victims.”

Vezina pegs the total loss at roughly $300,000 at this point.

“The value on the building is roughly $200,000 so you’d be surprised at how quick the contents add up could be anywhere from $300,000 to 400,000 total loss.”