Stubborn house fire keeps NBFD busy Monday afternoon Update

Following up on Monday's fire at 6261 Highway 63 in Feronia Monday afternoon, Fire Prevention Officer Joe Gardiner has narrowed his search for the cause to a space heater.

Gardiner informed BayToday this morning that it appears to be a space heater that was plugged into an extension cord.

"The heater sitting on news paper which was on the bathroom floor and was the material first ignited," he notes.

He has yet to speak with the the homeowner as to whether or not the heater was on or powered so he cannot tell for sure if this is what caused the fire.

"Although I'm 95 percent sure."

There were no injuries and Gardiner pegs the damage around $70,000.

"The guys did a great job saving this house as it was pretty far out of town."

"It was a two station call with approximately 16 members on scene."

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North Bay fire crews responded to a structure fire at 6261 Highway 63 in Feronia Monday afternoon.

Firefighters responded to the call at 1:36pm and arrived to find smoke visible. Crews located the fire in attic and immediately began to attack it but fire proved stubborn and it took crews over an hour to knock it down.

“I bet we were at it for over an hour,” explains Deputy Fire Chief Brian Hunt.

“There were two stations here shuttling water and the guys were working through they never stopped. So I would say it was a good hour trying to get a handle on it.”

“This was pretty stubborn,” he continues describing what they found at the scene.

“The fire was up in the attic area of the house. Where it started we aren’t sure yet it is still under investigation at this point a will be as the guys are just doing overhaul right now.”

“But they had pretty significant smoke up there and when they finally open it up they could see that they had a lot of fire up in that attic.”

Fire Prevention Officer Joe Gardiner agreed it was too early to give a definitive cause of fire but did note an area around the dryer vents on the first floor were cause for concern during his preliminary investigation.

Gardiner also said initial estimate for damages is in the neighbourhood of $200,000 but says that will change once a thorough investigation is complete.

Hunt agreed that it is too early to tell if the house is a write off.

“It’s really hard to say until you really get into it in this particular case there is substantial fire damage inside the house.”

“And once you start to open it up and vent out you can see more, and once the guys did that then of course they had to attack the fire from the inside. They also opened up the roof to vent it to get the superheated smoke and gases out of there to see what was really going on.”

No one was injured and the homeowner was not home at the time.

Two dogs were located in the back yard so the platoon chief had the human society attend and remove the dogs for the pets’ safety until the homeowner can be reached.

Fire trucks and OPP units had the highway blocked while they battled the blaze. The highway was reopened to traffic at 4:25pm.