Second house fire in the city Sunday

A second family will be seeking temporary shelter following a house fire Sunday.

Deputy Fire Chief Mike Bechard says within half an hour after responding to an early morning house fire on Fourth Avenue today, city fire crews were called out to a second blaze at 109 Birchs Road.

The call came in at 8:38am and crews were dispatched to the scene at 8:41am.

Bechard explains that there was code yellow call back that saw supports come in to ensure crews were covering the city while other crews focused on battling the blazes.

“We have an overtime crew going on right now so there’s a number of firefighters called in, in addition to our normal crew cause obviously we had two fires back to back in the community so it’s going to a push on the resources.”

“The guys did a fantastic job of responding and keeping damage to a minimum,” he adds.



Three people in the home when the blaze started but everyone got out of the home safely and there were no injuries.

He notes that the garage and roof sustained a significant amount of damage, however, the origin and cause of the fire is undetermined at this time.

“Well we can’t give you a specific origin as that is still under investigation but as you can see most of the damage has occurred in the garage area.”

“We may never know what for sure the cause is,” he explains.

“You know that’s the thing about fires it’s a work in progress and it’s an investigation but we’ll be working on that today and we should have something later today but at this time it is undetermined.”



Bechard dismissed chatter from onlookers that the house was under renovations noting the residents were new in the home.

“Actually this family just moved into the home a few months ago so you know they were still working on unpacking stuff out of the garage.”

Bechard says the insurance company will determine if the home can be repaired or if it is a write-off but he estimates the damages to be in the $200,000 range.