McIntyre St. E. fire contained to porch

The North Bay Fire Department responded to a fire in the 400 block of McIntyre St. E. just after 9 pm Friday.

“Just after 9:30pm Fire Dispatch got a call for a house fire,” explains Chief Fire Prevention Officer Randy Vezina.

“Two stations were dispatched, Stations One and Two, a few minutes later we had our trucks on scene from Station One, and they observed a fair amount of smoke production and open flame at the porch area of this two story structure.”

“An attack line was advanced and the fire was knocked down rather quickly. The fire was contained to the front and underneath of an unheated and un-energized porch.”

Vezina says there was significant charring done to the joist of the porch underneath and smoke made its way into both the first and second floor apartments.

“So there may be some clean up required some professional cleaning.”

“And we can only estimate the loss right now at $30,000.”

Vezina says they called in VCARS due to the overwhelming burn odor inside the two rental units.

“So a man an woman from the first floor apartment and their two dogs will be housed by VCARS and a man an woman from a second floor apartment will be housed by VCARS (too).”

Once sorted, food, clothing, and lodging was provided by The Canadian Red Cross' Personal Disaster Assistance team.

The owners of 426 McIntyre St. E. were on scene and very cooperative with Vezina who says the scene would be released back to them around 11:30pm.

He says at this time there is no cause for the fire but the investigation will continue.

“We did request that police attend just to observe and assign the incident and occurrence number,” Vezina tells Baytoday.

“We know that the porch is not energized, there is no what we would call competent ignition sources, I'm not in any position to say how the fire started. We'll take our photographs and we'll continue to interview people and document this fire.”

There were no injuries associated with the fire.