WATCH: Elderly couple killed in East Sooke fire
New details are emerging about a house fire in East Sooke that took the lives of a elderly couple.
A team of approximately 30 volunteer firefighters were called to the house on Copper Mine Road around 4 a.m. Saturday morning.
According to Chief Roger Beck of the East Sooke Volunteer Fire Department, the fire was caused by an electrical problem in the entertainment centre. The home had two smoke alarms, but neither was working.
Beck noticed that as he approached the blaze, the sounds of a smoke alarm was “very conspicuous by its absence.”
“We could hear the cracking of the flames,” he says. “We could clearly hear our footsteps on the grass. But there was no buzzing of the smoke alarm.”
Leonard Grundy, 85, and his 83-year-old wife Brenda died in the fire.
Beck describes them as “really nice people. He’s an old war vet. She’s wonderful. You never want anybody involved in this kind of tragedy, but these were those people who you hope are last on the list to have to go through something like this.”
Emergency crews are asking homeowners who may already be checking and changing their clocks this weekend to do the same with smoke alarms, making sure all the batteries are working.
-with files from Tanya Beja
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