Gibsons Fire Department was called to a house fire on Jensen Road in Langdale at around 2 a.m. on July 31 that took several hours to subdue and threatened the nearby forest.
A total of 24 firefighters responded to the blaze. Once on scene they were told that seven occupants of the home had escaped without injury.
“What we had was a fire that had extended and breached the roof, so we knew this was going to be a battle – quite a stubborn one,” said Gibsons Fire Chief Rob Michael.
“We elected not to put our firefighters at risk and did an exterior attack on the fire until we had it under control.”
After a couple of hours of fighting the house fire externally, firefighters had the flames knocked down enough to enter the building.
“We ended up going in and doing some overhaul and pulling the drywall down,” Michael said, noting “there was a lot of water damage to the structure.
“We did our best to save any personal belongings and we were able to grab some medication and things like that for the family – but other than that, it was a mess.”
He said the fire department’s main priority was to keep the fire from spreading to nearby homes and the forest.
“We didn’t want it to get into that forested area and take away on us.”
Firefighters and nearby neighbours have been regularly checking the wooded area behind the house, to ensure nothing was missed.
The cause of the fire, Michael said, was “discarded smoking materials that were put out in a planter outside the home.”
“It appears to have started on the exterior and worked its way up the wall and into the structure from there.”
He said that while the fire was accidental in nature, it’s a good reminder for people to be extremely careful when discarding cigarettes, even when they look like they’re out.
