Home gutted
A suspicious blaze in North Sydney on Tuesday morning threatened several homes.
A suspicious fire gutted a vacant duplex home on Forrest Street early Tuesday morning and threatened several homes around it.
The fire broke out some time after 3 a.m. and saw the North Sydney Volunteer Fire Department initially respond and then get relief and assistance from the nearby Sydney Mines Volunteer Fire Department.
“The building was fully involved inside,” North Sydney Fire Chief Lloyd Macintosh said about what his department saw when they arrived on scene.
“The building was completely secure, everything was boarded up. We had to pull off the covers over the doors and windows to get in.”
Firefighters did not enter the building due to the amount of fire inside when they had arrived and instead fought the fire from the outside for most of their many hours on scene.
One firefighter was briefly treated for smoke inhalation before returning to the scene, but outside of some slips and falls in icy weather conditions there were no other injuries of note.
The burned out building was once two housing units at the civic addresses of five and seven Forrest Streets. While both sides of that building had been empty, the fire did pose a considerable risk to neighbouring homes that are occupied.
“There was one house to the backside that is one foot away and then there is a house across the driveway from it that is eight feet from it,” said Macintosh, noting that neither homes appear to have been damaged by the blaze.
The fire initially lit the night sky in the early morning hours of Tuesday and could be seen from kilometres away. By 7 a.m. equipment from both departments could be seen soaking down what was left of the burned out building.
Macintosh said they are calling the fire ‘suspicious in nature for now’ and the scene will be guarded.
An investigation will be conducted by the North Sydney Volunteer Fire Department, the Fire Marshal’s office and the Cape Breton Regional Police.