A house fire in Calling Lake left a family of six without a home this Christmas.
The fire is believed to have been started by a wood stove. However, Calling Lake fire chief Barry Schmidt said he couldn’t confirm that until he received the report from the fire investigator.
The structure of the house remained standing, but the inside suffered heat and smoke damage. The fire department responded to the blaze at around 8:30 p.m. on Dec. 17, after a neighbour called Schmidt.
“The neighbour came home and saw smoke coming out the eaves, and called me and asked what the fire (department’s) number was,” he recalled. “I said, ‘Oh, geez, don’t you know who you’re talking to? You’re talking to the fire chief. You don’t need the number.’ She told me what was going on there so I phoned the guys.”
Shortly after, Schmidt and eight volunteer firefighters went to the scene, but had trouble accessing the inside of the house.
“We could not get in through the door on one side,” he said. “So, we went through a little window that somebody else had broken out. We were able to contain (the fire) right in the room there, where the stove was. Luckily, it did not go into the attic space. It would have been quite difficult to put out.”
The two parents and four children — including two 12 year olds, a 10 year old and a four-month-old baby — lost all of their belongings.
Two residents of Calling Lake have been collecting donations of clothes and household items for the family, who have since moved into a temporary home.
