Fire-damaged 1871 home worth saving, says expert
Suspicious fire burns roof, siding of house on site of proposed heritage park in Kelowna
A nearly 150-year-old Kelowna home damaged by fire could be rebuilt if the political will exists to provide the necessary funding, a heritage conservator says.
The square log construction of the two-storey Fleming House likely kept the damage from being worse than it might otherwise have been, Robin Digby says.
“Log buildings are famously resistant to fire, and I know that sounds weird,” Digby said Tuesday. “There’s a lot of wood in them, but there’s not many places for oxygen to get in to carry a fire.”
Surveying the fire-damaged Fleming House at the base of Dilworth Mountain, Digby pointed out that while much of the siding and the roof were burned, the heavy square timbers were blackened but remain largely intact.
“Those logs look in fine condition. They’re a little black on the outside, but they’re really not that bad,” Digby said. “A roof’s just a roof. That’s not too difficult to repair.
“It looks ugly, but it’s well within the realm of saving, in my estimation,” said Digby, who has helped with the authentic restoration of many heritage properties.
The unoccupied city-owned house, built in 1871 by Frederick Brent, was burned Monday evening in what firefighters are calling a suspicious blaze. Its location along Mill Creek near Dilworth Drive is a favourite encampment for the homeless, with bylaw officials often stopping by to clear away tents and other debris.
“It looks like the fire started on the outside,” said Insp. Paul Johnson of the Kelowna Fire Department. “It’s been an area where homeless people try to go inside, make a fire, and unfortunately it looks like this one got out of hand.”
Two other city-owned structures on the property, a grist mill described as Kelowna’s oldest industrial building and a milk shed, were not damaged.
Members of the Central Okanagan Heritage Society have hoped since the late 1990s to sufficiently restore the buildings so they could be put to productive use. But funding has been an issue, although the city has done some work on buildings’ exterior and foundation to protect against water damage and rot.
“It’s pretty devastating to see of the oldest buildings in the city catch fire like this,” society president Don Knox said.
Peter Chataway, a society member who has long championed funding to restore the buildings, said the fire underscores the risks of leaving heritage properties in what he called a vulnerable state.
“Perhaps the restoration of the buildings could have been expedited instead of just leaving them in an area known to be used by vagrants,” Chataway said. “Maybe this fire will help kick a real restoration program into gear.”
The city moved the buildings onto the site in 2002 to create a heritage park, but the structures have never been opened to the public.
A few years ago, a city-issued request for proposals from developers interested in making an adaptive reuse of the buildings, for commercial purposes, drew no submissions.