CALGARY – It wasn’t smoke that woke Stephen Yang from his Sunday afternoon nap, it was the loud buzzing of a fire detector next door.
“Inside my house seemed fine,” said Yang, who had been sleeping in the basement of his mother’s home on Citadel Acres Close N.W.
“I heard noises outside and I heard a smoke alarm from next door, so I went to take a look and then I saw smoke and something’s on fire.
“I walked outside and I looked back and I saw my house was on fire.”
His mother’s home was destroyed in a blaze that engulfed two neighbouring homes and damaged at least five more, including three across the street with siding that melted.
About the same time, 3 p.m., Yang exited his burning house, a shirtless James Martsch was trying to rescue a dog next door.
Martsch and Greg Snow, who both live nearby, broke the front window of the house owned by Jamie and Tammy Enns and shouted for Jake, a border collie.
Get breaking National news
All that remains of the home now is a set of concrete steps and the foundation, but before the fire was able to burn the structure to oblivion, the Enns’ family dog was pulled out of thick black smoke.
“It was black soot, almost paper, just blasting in the face. I thought there was no way, just no way, the dog’s going to survive this,” said Martsch.
“We were yelling for him, screaming for him and the fire’s starting to come around and then there was his face.”
Martsch and Snow pulled the dog out.
No one was hurt in the blaze.
The fire department is expected to announce the cause of the fire as early as today, but officials have said high winds and the fact the homes were built so close together were factors in the rapid spread of the flames.
The fire department has been pushing for changes to the provincial and national building codes to require sprinklers and flame retardant material to be a mandatory part of all new home construction.
Alberta Municipal Affairs Minister Hector Goudreau has dismissed the idea of requiring sprinklers, but is revising the Alberta Safety Codes Act.
Fire Chief Bruce Burrell has said he wants municipalities to be given more freedom under the act to create their own building bylaws.
The housing industry has been reluctant to endorse the mandatory installation of sprinklers, noting the additional cost to a home. The industry has supported offering sprinklers as an option for buyers.
Jamie Enns said a layer of fire retardant insulation in his home might have given firefighters a chance to save the house.
“At least it might have slowed it down,” he said. “The houses are too close together.”
“We’re all sandwiched in here pretty tight,” added neighbour Sheila Martsch. “That’s part of the problem.”
The fire was just one street over from a blaze in December 2009 that destroyed five homes and damaged three others, on Citadel Forest Place N.W. That blaze was started by an illegal marijuana grow op in the basement of one of the homes and quickly spread due to strong winds during a winter storm.
The province brought in a significant number of changes to the Alberta building code in 2009 following a working group looking at high-intensity residential fires.
Comments
Want to discuss? Please read our Commenting Policy first.