A fire broke out in a vacant home in Campbell River on Tuesday night (Nov. 4).
Fire crews responded to the scene on the 1400 block of 16 ave around 8:45 p.m. What was originally a routine call about an alarm being set off turned into a more serious structure fire incident, fire chief Thomas Doherty explained.
“We got a request for an alarms call that quickly upgraded to smoke coming from a structure,” he said. “One of the caretakers of the property met us on site and confirmed that the home was vacant and nobody was in it.”
“Crews made a quick entry and were able to disperse and contain the fire to an area on the main level,” he added. “There’s a fair amount of damage to the home. The fire burnt through the floor and there was heavy smoke damage.”
Because the home was vacant at the time the department is considering it suspicious.
“We’ll be investigating,” he said. “It was a vacant home and any time you have a vacant home and a fire starts we initially deem it as suspicious, but we’ll see once we get further investigation done.”
Crews were on scene for a few hours on Tuesday night. The fire had spread to the crawl space in the building and crews wanted to ensure that it would not spread any further. They managed to keep the flames within the building, and no other structures were damaged.
An investigation into the cause determined that it was electrical in nature.
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marc.kitteringham@campbellrivermirror.com
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