An early morning fire Sunday destroyed a house on Rondane Crescent near Tabor Lake.
Tracy Calogheros and her husband woke up just before 6 a.m. Sunday to the sound of flames consuming the house, which at the time had two occupants, Steve and Deborah Mamic, and their dog, who all made it to safety unharmed.
“I’ve never seen anything burn that fast,” said Tracy Calogheros. “We went out of the house at three minutes to six and by eight minutes after six the whole thing was fully engulfed.
“It’s situated just across the backyard from where our bedroom is and I could hear this strange, ominous whooshing sound. I turned to John and said ‘that can’t be wind’ and he looked out the window and could see the flames.”
Tracy called 9-1-1 while John rushed to meet the couple coming out of their back door.
The Tabor Lake Volunteer Fire Department showed up a few minutes later but by that time the fire was too far advanced to save the house.
“It’s gone, there’s nothing left standing,” said Tracy. “The heat and the height of the flames, it felt to me like watching that Island Lake forest fire in 2018 going again, it was that same intensity and so fast.”
David Mothus, a neighbor who lives five houses away, spoke to Deborah Mamic, who told him she was awake when the fire broke out. She told Mothus she suspects the cause of the fire was a Halloween jack o’lantern which had a small candle in it.
“That’s the only thing she could think of this morning, I felt so bad for them, but nobody got hurt,” Mothus said. “They’re lucky. She happened to be up doing some cleaning first thing in the morning and she saw the orange (flames) in the house and within seconds smoke had filled the house. So she screamed for her husband and if she wasn’t up cleaning they probably would have died because they would have had smoke inhalation and not made it out. They’re lucky.”
Mothus has started a Go Fund Me page to help the couple recover from the fire, which has already raised more than $5,000.
“I talked to them and I knew they had insurance but that takes a bit of time,” said Mothus. “I wasn’t thinking they would need money but with all the stress we already have in the world it’s just a way of saying your neighbours care about you.”
Eighteen firefighters from three volunteer halls responded to the fire. Bryant Kemble, chief of the Ferndale Tabor Lake Volunteer Fire Department, said the initial attack crew focused on the neighbouring house to try to contain the blaze.
“We responded with two trucks and we had Pineview and Shell-Glen come for water support,” said Kemble. “When we got here we sprayed foam on the neighbours’ house right away because it was like a shower with the wind blowing and the sparks falling on it, so we put the bulk of our energy into that the first 20 minutes we were on scene. The house next door is maybe 60 feet away.”
At 3 p.m. Sunday, nine hours after he arrived, Kemble was still at the house trying to extinguish the final embers.
“We just had an excavator here cleaning up so we can put the remainder out because (the house) fell into itself,” he said. “All that’s left standing are the studs inside. I’ve got a 30 (foot) by 40 (foot) hole here with a wood basement and that’s not helping matters either.
Kemble was unable to give any details on the suspected cause but said nobody was injured.
“The owners went to town with the RCMP to the hospital to be checked, but they both got out,” he said.
