Home destroyed in Friday afternoon blaze

A Barrhead family is homeless after a fire ripped through their house on Oct. 14.

The Barrhead fire department, EMS and RCMP all responded to the fire on 44 Street a few metres south of 53 Avenue at around 4:45 p.m. on Friday. When they arrived, the fire was fully involved, said deputy fire chief Les Goertz.

“It was a bad fire,” he said. “As far as the house, it’s pretty much destroyed.”

Despite the size of the fire, Goertz said it proved to be reasonably easy to extinguish.

“It went fairly quick for us,” he said. “We had it knocked down and out within about an hour, which is fairly quick for a fire that big.”

However, he added that although they were able to put out the fire in relatively short order, the damage had been done.

On Saturday, Goertz and the fire investigator returned to the scene to try to determine what may have caused the blaze. After examining the site, he said the cause is believed to have been “improper disposal of smoking materials,” which he said were things like cigarette butts.

No one was injured in the fire. The only occupant at the time was outside the house when firefighters arrived, Goertz said, and was calm and helpful throughout the entire ordeal.

When firefighters arrived, Goertz said there were a lot of people milling around who made it harder for the firefighters to get set up.

In addition, he said once firefighters were set up, there were still people in the way and several vehicles tried to drive across the water hoses and onto 44 Street, which is something that shouldn’t happen.

“We would really appreciate it on the fire department’s behalf if people would just stay back and not drive in where we need to get to,” he said. “If we can’t get to the fire, we can’t put it out.”