The latest in a rash of suspicious fires in vacant buildings in and around Wellington County took out an old farmhouse in Milton on July 11.
The vacant one and a half storey stone structure located southeast of Rockwood on the Guelph Line, a few kilometres north of 25 Sideroad, was destroyed in the early morning fire.
“I was first on scene from an emergency services perspective and when I arrived the building basically had fire showing from every window, every door on both storeys,” Milton Fire Chief Dave Pratt said in an interview. “Basically the house was already too far gone to try and extinguish the fire with any success.”
He said firefighters took a defensive attack and tried to suppress the flames.
“Before the fire was suppressed the roof had fallen into the first floor which had fallen into the basement so at the end of it all … there’s basically just four walls standing,” Pratt said.
He added the fire is considered suspicious.
“There’s no power to the house,” he said. “There’s nobody living in the house to our knowledge.”
He noted, “In my opinion, there’s no competent ignition source, there’s no power to the building, there’s no storm in the area.”
Pratt said the fields surrounding the house had crops growing, indicating the land was part of an active farming operation.
“But all the grass around the house per se, it was all probably … three feet tall except I could see a path of grass that was kind of knocked down from somebody walking to what I would call the back door,” Pratt said. “So to me that would indicate no activity in or out of the house other than one person.”
Pratt said the Milton Fire Department and the Halton Regional Police Service conducted an investigation.
“There’s nothing to indicate how (or) why the fire started so it’s suspicious in nature,” Pratt said. “We’ve contacted the Office of the Fire Marshal.”
Pratt added the fire would be added to the ongoing investigation into about 20 suspicious fires in the area.
“There’s a taskforce set up to try and see if they can determine the cause or who the culprit is,” he said.
Visit wellingtonadvertiser.com for a full list of the suspicious fires and an interactive map.
