Okanagan residents are being reminded to be mindful when using electrical heating devices. The warning comes after a fire broke out Wednesday morning at a duplex on McMillan Road in West Kelowna.
“I was sitting there and smelled smoke,” resident Mike Perras said. “Then we opened the door and saw smoke and thought whoa and we called the fire department.”
The 54-year-old man and his wife, along with their cat and dog, managed to escape unharmed. No one was home on the other side of the duplex at the time.
“When we got here, there were flames on the second floor,” West Kelowna Assistant Fire Chief Chad Gartrell said. “We got called to this residence for a shed fire originally. While crews were responding, it was upgraded to a structure fire.”
The fire started in an attached shed at the back of the house and flames were starting to spread through the floor before crews managed to extinguish it. Damage was kept to a minimum.
The cause of the fire has been deemed electrical. Fire investigators say a space heater, which was being used to prevent pipes from freezing up, is to blame. It has fire officials reminding the public to always be careful when using any heating devices.
“It goes with baseboards, with anything that generates heat that can have stuff pushed up against it like Christmas trees, all that stuff,” Gartrell said. “Make sure you have that space so that you don’t have combustible products against it.”
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