A fire just before midnight Friday completely destroyed a two-story home at 88 Elm Street in Laurentian
Valley Township, displacing a family of four. The fire apparently started in the carport and quickly spread to
the house. Firefighters battled the blaze in -28°c temperatures when factoring in the wind chill that night.

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Laurentian Valley Township – A family of four from Laurentian Valley (LV) Township was displaced over the weekend as fire ravaged their home just before midnight on Friday.

Fire Chief Tim Sutcliffe said the department was dispatched to a structure fire at 88 Elm Street at 11:57 p.m. and responded with 14 personnel, a pumper, two tankers and an emergency vehicle.

When firefighters arrived on scene, the carport at the one end of the two-story frame home was totally engulfed in flames.

“There was a carport on the end of it and it was gone already,” he said. “That’s how the owner realized her house was on fire.

“She looked out the window and saw the glow from the carport,” he added. “She just happened to be up, heard a couple of bangs, looked out the window, and saw the glow.”

She immediately helped evacuate her husband and two children.

“They got out in the nick of time,” Chief Sutcliffe said.

He said the carport and two vehicles inside were destroyed, and the fire had spread into the attic of the home.

“It just went across the top of the house like crazy. We couldn’t get ahead of it,” he explained.

 “We tried to go inside when we first got there to cut it off, and the floors were already soft.”

He said there were no neighboring structures threatened.

It was a bitterly cold night, with the temperature hovering around minus 17 at the time of the fire, and the wind chill making it more like minus 28.

“It was not a good night, that’s for sure. We didn’t have any major problems with freezing, but we had to be very careful with what we did.

“We had to keep everything going all the time to stop from freezing,” he added. “By morning, it was very cold when there were no flames left, and we were just hitting hot spots.”

Some members of the department had to sit in vehicles at times to get warm, while others had to return to the fire hall for a change of gear as they were covered in ice, which made it very difficult to just move around.

The area around the fire also got very icy, he said. Water from the hydrant at Home Depot was hauled to the address.

The cause of the fire is unknown, but is not considered suspicious. The parents of the displaced family live across the street, so occupants of the home had a place to go. Chief Sutcliffe said the owners were insured, adding he heard a fundraiser for the family that was already underway was proving to be quite successful.