ERIN – A homeowner who carelessly discarded smoldering ashes from a wood stove is responsible for starting a fire that spread across three to four acres of wildland here on Nov. 10.
The call came in at 10:52am with roughly 30 firefighters from station 10 and 50 arriving on scene at 11:18am to find a large area of land on fire, said Erin Fire Chief Jim Sawkins.
Joining in the fight were Guelph/Eramosa with a tanker truck and Centre Wellington firefighters.
“It was a big one, we needed to circle it real quick,” Sawkins said. “There was quite an extensive fire, back into the bush.”
Firefighters encircled the fire, cutting a line in the ground to prevent flames from spreading and worked the fire back through trees, brush and leaves to a centre-point.
The fire was out by 1:38pm, when the department cleared the scene.
Sawkins said there was an abandoned shed levelled in the blaze and the covering of a storage tent was also destroyed, but there were no injuries.
The homeowner will not face charges for the fire, Sawkins said.
“If it had been an illegal burn, we’d be looking at [charges] but accidents happen,” he said.
