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Luck was on everyone’s side in townhouse fire in Surrey B.C.

Firefighters in Surrey knock down a townhouse fire at 10pm on July 19, 2017. Karl Casselman / Global News

There was a bit of a close call for two Surrey residents and firefighters in a townhouse blaze at 102-A Avenue and 133rd Street late Wednesday night.

LISTEN:  Surrey Fire acting Battalion Chief Spiro Pegios

Acting Battalion Chief Spiro Pegios says they were called out at 10 p.m.

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“Flames [came] through the roof and proceeded to make the attack,” he says. “They also encountered the two occupants who were out of the building at that time, seemingly uninjured, but they were checked for smoke inhalation and later cleared.”

Pegios says the two occupants were lucky.

“They did have smoke alarms but they were disconnected, however the occupant was awake, luckily at this time was able to get out at a timely fashion and warn his neighbours as well.”

“We like to keep stressing the importance of having working smoke alarms in the house.”

But Pegios says that wasn’t the only fortunate aspect to the situation.

“When they made their interior attack, we were informed by the owner, the occupant of that unit, that he had quite a few rounds of ammunition in the upstairs area,” he says. “He’s a gun collector. He warned us as he was concerned for our crews, as we are as well. And we pulled our crews out and formulated a bit of a different plan to extinguish the fire completely.”

Pegios says the fire started in the kitchen.

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