Busy Weekend in February

Firefighters faced a challenging night on February 4th. The day began routine enough with just a couple of burning complaints. At around 5:30 that evening crews were called out for a structure fire. A well involved mobile home was on fire in the 6600 block of Sooke Road. Firefighters quickly arrived on Engine 1 and pulled two lines, the first to protect the exposure (another mobile home only a few feet away) and the second to hit the fire that had fully involved the deck and front portion of the home. Ladder 1 arrived shortly after and laid in a 4 inch supply line from the hydrant. Due to the long lay in needed, there was not sufficient hose on board and crews had to pull an additional 300 feet from E-1 to finish the connection. Not only were crews facing the fire, they had to contend with dozens of cars and spectators taking their cars down the driveway and over the hoses. This was quickly solved by closing the driveway off. With a water supply now established, Engine 2 arrived as the RIT team. Closely behind was Rescue 1 doing traffic control and dealing with the family whose home was on fire. There were two occupants in the building when the fire started. Both escaped out the back door without injury. The neigbouring home had 7 occupants. The heat from the fire cracked one window on the exposure but firefighters were able to keep it from spreading. Crews did an excellent job in stopping the fire and actually managed to save the rear half of the mobile home. This allowed the homeowner to later salvage much of her possessions. The ESS crew provided great comfort to the residents and were able to secure 72 hours of emergency supplies and accomodation for the uninsured resident. The site was secured and an investigation began the next morning. With no obvious cause to be found, the electrical inspector was called in to look into this aspect. Nothing was found with respect to electrical as the cause, although many problems with the wiring were found in the home. With no accidental cause to be found the fire has been labeled suspicious and turned over to the RCMP for further investigation. (it was also determined that at some point earlier (no timeline determined yet) that the first mobile home in the park had also been set on fire, however this one appeared to have gone out on its own. This tied into the recent set fire at the Toronto Dominion Bank now under construction along with several other arson fires in recent months has fire and police officials obviously concerned.