Historic Wainfleet building destroyed by fire
Minor House burns week before Marshville Heritage Festival
Fire destroyed a heritage building in Wainfleet Thursday night just a week before the annual Marshville Heritage Festival.
Wainfleet Fire and Emergency Services Chief Morgan Alcock said volunteer firefighters were called to Marshville Heritage Village — just a couple hundred metres away from Station 2 on Park Street — at 11 p.m. Thursday.
“We had reports of heavy smoke in the area. The initial crews responded and were faced with heavy fire conditions from a structure in the heritage area,” said Alcock, just more than a week into the job as the township’s new fire chief.
He said there was a baseball game in progress at the ball fields next to the heritage village at the time and it was the players who spotted the fire and called it in.
“We had 24 firefighters on scene and all of our equipment. We did call Haldimand (for a tanker) but we were able to secure a water source and did not require those resources.”
Water was drawn from a pond beside the arena, which sits just in front of the heritage village.
Alcock said it was a stubborn fire to fight and it appeared that firefighters would be on scene for hours to ensure the blaze was extinguished.
The building that burned was, according to the festival’s Facebook page, the Minor House.
“Given the height of the fire and the materials that are burning it’s proving hard to reach the seat of the fire,” he said, adding the wood inside the home was very dry.
The north side of the home collapsed inside during the fire and Alcock said there was no exterior collapse, allowing firefighters to remain safe as they continued to fight the fire.
As of 12:30 a.m. Friday, the chief said he hadn’t decided whether he was going to have the building pulled down but it appeared to be a total loss.
“I would like to do an investigation in the daylight … we’ll secure the scene tonight,” he said in the early morning hours of Friday.