House fire on Lettice Perry Road North as of Thursday morning. (Lethbridge News Now)

By David Opinko

Thursday house fire in north Lethbridge likely caused by appliance or extension cord

Oct 11, 2019 | 12:07 PM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – Lethbridge Fire and Emergency Services has provided updates on their investigation to a major house fire.

Investigator Marc Royer says they received a call from dispatch just before 3:00 am on Thursday, October 10th for a residential fire on Lettice Perry Road North.

It took just six minutes for the first units to arrive on the scene, and two minutes later, there were eight units and 21 firefighters attending the blaze.

Police showed up first and ensured everyone in the nearby homes were able to get out safely.

Royer reports that they saw the flames going at least 20-30 feet above the two-story house.

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“The first actions done were, the fire department put exposure lines down both sides of the house that was affected. This protected and prevented the loss of the two houses on both sides, so we saved two family residences by doing the exposure lines to begin with.”

After several hours of work, crews were able to extinguish the blaze, but, as Royer pointed out yesterday, much of the site was frozen at the time so it took them a little bit longer than expected to get inside the house.

He says they have a good idea of how the fire started.

“We have concluded that the recreation vehicle in the back that was parked beside the garage was the cause of the fire. We are also confident the fire was due to, likely caused by either an electrical appliance or an electrical cord that was connected to this vehicle.”

By the time firefighters were able to put out the fire on the RV, it was so extensively burned that it is hard to pinpoint which piece of machinery ultimately caused it.

“Any plugged-in appliance can cause a fire – your coffee machine, anything you have in your house or your RV – if it’s plugged in and it’s energized, then it has the ability to cause a fire.”

Royer is thanking residents in the neighbourhood for immediately calling 911 to let them know about the house fire as it crucially allowed them to tackle it early before it could spread further.

However, he is addressing the public with a very serious concern.

“We had a little bit of an issue with a couple of people driving over our firefighters’ hoses. Now, this is very dangerous and can cause loss of life and of property due to an unexpected water loss if one of our hoses explodes while we’re inside a house fighting a fire.”

Eight homes had either fire or smoke damage.

Although Royer could not give an exact number, he believes that damages are well over half a million dollars.