An early morning fire here on Oct. 1 destroyed an estate, leaving 15 people homeless.
“It’s got to be the highest dollar loss as far as a residential fire structure in our township,” Puslinch Fire Chief Steven Goode said of the damage estimate of more than $3 million.
Smoke alarms woke 14 people who were sleeping in the home on Ellis Road between Townline Road and Wellington Road 32.
“If they didn’t have working smoke alarms this would have been awful,” Goode said. “It would have been awful for a lot of different people.”
Two residents heard the alarms, went downstairs to investigate, saw fire in the service room and called 911, Goode explained.
All 14 people, three generations from one family, got safely out of the house before the fire department arrived. One of the residents was not home at the time of the fire.
The fire department received the call at about 2:53am and when firefighters arrived the 10,000 square-foot structure was already engulfed in flames.
More than 40 firefighters from four departments – Puslinch, Guelph-Eramosa, Cambridge and Guelph – battled the blaze for over four hours.
“They worked to try to protect certain areas of the home, but because of … the combustibles and the fact that the fire had progressed the way it did before we even arrived, there was no saving it,” Goode said.
“So their concentration went to protecting some propane tanks, electrical (items) and trees and stuff like that.”
Goode said he suspects the house contained a number of living areas.
“So when you deal with these compartments it’s hard to access … we just couldn’t reach with our streams in certain areas of the home from the exterior,” he said.
Because the flames were so hot, firefighters were unable to use an aerial device or get around the house to fight the fire from the sides or rear of the building. Fire crews also had to use tankers to shuttle water to the site, which “takes time,” Goode said.
One resident was taken to hospital but there were no injuries to the firefighters or the residents as a result of the blaze, Goode said.
He said the cause of the fire is undetermined. The damage estimate of more than $3 million includes the structure itself and six vehicles in the garage that were destroyed.
