Quick action by an astute neighbour and District of North Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services saved a Windsor Park home from destruction, Thursday afternoon, along with the owner’s cat.
The call came in at 5:30 p.m. when a passerby noticed smoke coming from the home on the 400 block of Ellis Street, said Assistant Chief Dwayne Derban.
The owners weren’t home at the time, but their kitty was. The door was locked so firefighters forced their way in and tracked the smoke to a main floor bathroom.
“It was quite smoky and actually quite hot when they went in,” Derban said. “They were able to extinguish the flames pretty quickly with a minimal amount of water.”
Crews cleared the smoke from the house and started opening up walls around the area of the fire, making sure there were no embers waiting to reignite the building.
There is smoke damage throughout the main floor, but the fire was mostly contained to one room and the house can likely be salvaged, Derban said.
The highlight though was finding and saving the cat, Derban added.
“We took the cat to the neighbour. The cat was meowing nicely when we left it there so that was the good news story,” he said.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation but Derban said they are looking into electrical wiring as a potential source.
The case underscores the importance of having working smoke alarms, Derban said.
And thanks are owed to the passerby who didn’t hesitate to call 911 as soon as they saw something suspicious.
“The sooner we can get there, the sooner we can intervene. With fires like this, every second counts because contents have just become so much more volatile than they used to be. Fire spreads so much more quickly, so time is of the essence,” he said.
