On Monday, June 1, a Barrhead family lost their home to what has been deemed as a unknown electrical fire.
At 1:17 p.m. the Barrhead Fire Department received a call about smoke coming from the basement of 5117 52 street.
“When units arrived, they noticed the fire self venting out of the bottom windows in the basement, and they proceeded to send a crew upstairs to do a quick search of the building,” Barrhead Fire Chief John Whittaker said.
During the search of the home, the crew found two family pets who had died because of the smoke inhalation, however all other members of the family had made it out of the home safely.
“Everybody was all okay, unfortunately they only got out with their clothes on their back,” he said.
Whittaker added once the search of the home was complete, the crews got to work extinguishing the fire.
“A crew from the outside of the building knocked down the fire initially, and the search crew went down into the basement and completely extinguished the fire,” he said.
The fire itself was contained in the basement.
“There was a lot of smoke damage to the property, however structurally the property is still very sound,” Whittaker said, adding once the fire was completely extinguished, they began investigating the cause.
“Working with insurance investigators, Barrhead Fire conducted an investigation of the property, and identified the location of where the fire started, however cannot conclusively determine what the fire was, so it will have to be brought up to an unknown cause at this time, however it was unknown electrical,” he said. “There was some sort of electrical fire that caused it.”
The homeowners are currently staying with family, and are waiting to find out what will become of their home.
“There are a lot of things to take into account,” Whittaker said, adding it is up to the insurance company as to whether the home is salvageable.
“They will have to do an independent evaluation,” he said. “There could be asbestos in the roof, it is a 1952 construction, so they may want to rip it down to the main floor, they may want to rip it right down and re-use the basement, or they may want to get rid of it all and start over.”
Whittaker was out of town the day of the fire, and said for the departments second call of the day, the crew did exceptionally well.
“From seeing what happened there, and seeing the times, I am one of the proudest fire chiefs in Alberta right now, these guys work their tails off and it shows,” he said. “The fact that they were able to knock it down before it spread throughout the whole property, and there wasn’t a lot of heat because the response time was fast, the knock-down time was fast.”
Whittaker added the employers of some of the firefighters should also be thanked.
“Having the people to be able to leave work and be able to do these sorts of things, we can’t even say enough about some of the employers that allow their staff to leave to come and fight a fire,” he said. “The fact that every one of our members here believes, acts professionally and dress professionally and hopefully provide a very professional service to the community.”
“I think that Barrhead is very lucky to have a fire department like we have here.”
