EDMONTON- Seven adults and three children have nowhere to live after a house at the Louis Bull reserve in Hobbema burned down on the weekend, the Louis Bull fire chief said Sunday.
The fire broke out Saturday morning in a house at the Louis Bull townsite, one of four First Nations communities that make up Hobbema, about 90 kilometres south of Edmonton.
Eight firefighters were called to the fire at about 10:30 a.m., Louis Bull fire Chief Francis Lynch said.
“Everybody got out fine … It’s pretty much a total loss.”
Firefighters battled the blaze and left the site shortly after 1 p.m., but the fire reignited about two hours later, he said.
“Initially, I thought it was out when we left the first time … but we had a driving wind that blew on top of the hill at probably about 40 or 60 kilometres (per hour) and reignited the house,” Lynch said.
“With driving-force winds there, we couldn’t really stop the fire.”
Firefighters who returned to the site at 3:30 p.m. had difficulty extinguishing the flames, he said. The fire was out around 7:30 p.m.
Louis Bull firefighters, who work security full-time but also serve as the 24-hour on-call fire department, used the band’s pumper truck to extinguish the fire, Lynch said.
“Our department only has the one pumper with 1,000 gallons and we weren’t anywhere near a hydrant. We do have hydrants in the townsite, but we weren’t anywhere close to a hydrant,” Lynch said.
A neighbouring fire department also brought in a tanker and pumper to supply water and fight the blaze, he said.
No one was injured and no other homes were damaged.
Fire investigators were working Sunday to determine the cause of the fire and a damage estimate.
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