Fire still smoulders

A fire that destroyed a house on Pheasant Road in Vernon's south BX neighbourhood last night was still smouldering Tuesday morning.

“We can't access the building at all because it's unsafe,” said BX/Swan Lake Fire Chief Bill Wacey as he stood outside the property just after 9 a.m. “The structure is completely compromised so we're going to bring in an excavator and it will start peeling the rest of the house apart so we can extinguish the rest of the fire.”

A family, with three children aged nine to 15, lost almost everything in the fire that started around 6:20 p.m.

“They were sitting down having supper so they were very fortunate to be out of there as fast as they did because it went up extremely quick, unusually quick to be honest.”

While the cause of the fire is not yet known, the fire chief has been told by the homeowner that it started in the laundry room.

“All we know right now it was in the basement, in the laundry room area. He went downstairs and smelled smoke, he opened the laundry room door and it was fully engulfed.”

A large shop beside the house is okay, Wacey said, but there were problems with outlying buildings.

He said some vehicles caught fire and crews from BX/Swan Lake and Coldstream fire departments fought to keep the huge blaze away from nearby homes.