A fire broke out at a Sturgeon County residence on Thursday morning with firefighters on the scene for more than six hours.
“The outside structure is fine. It’s pretty good, but the interior suffered extensive damage,” said Sturgeon County fire chief Pat Mahoney.
A family of six lives in the two-storey, stone-clad house in Pinnacle Ridge Estates. Fortunately no one was home at the time of the fire, and no pets were in the house either.
At its peak, 25 firefighters battled the blaze and extinguished hot spots. They included nine full-time firefighters from Sturgeon County and on-call firefighters from the District of Namao and Morinville.
A neighbour phoned in the alert at 9:49 a.m. and within minutes fire trucks arrived while police cordoned off the area to the public. The fire was under control by 2 p.m. It was followed by several hours of mop up and general cleanup.
Mahoney said the fire started in the basement and a witness passing by added that “pure smoke” was streaming from the windows.
“The main damage was in the basement, and the main stairwell in the middle of the house suffered substantial damage. To a lesser extent, the second floor suffered heat, smoke and water damage,” Mahoney said.
Although chilly temperatures dropped to five degrees Celsius accompanied by 24 km/h winds and a light afternoon snowstorm, the fire did not spread to adjoining empty lots on both sides of the residence.
The Sturgeon County fire department was still investigating the cause of the fire.
