A Sumas Street house has been boarded up after a major fire Friday. Photograph By Cornelia Naylor
A Burnaby fire captain singed his face pulling an elderly man to safety from the doorway of his burning house during a two-alarm fire Friday.
Fire crews were called to the 6100 block of Sumas Street just after 2 a.m. to find a single-storey house fully engulfed in flames.
In the course of sizing up the scene, fire Captain Wade Robertson spotted a man passed out in the front doorway, according to acting assistant fire Chief Dave Younger.
“The fire was going over top of him, so he grabbed him,” Younger said of Robertson. “He was very close to the fire. … I think it was a great rescue by our captain.”
The man, the home’s only occupant, was revived by firefighters, according to Younger, and then taken to hospital to be treated for burns and smoke inhalation.
Robertson, meanwhile, was checked out on scene for a minor heat rash near his ear, Younger said.
Talking to media at the scene during the fire, assistant Chief John Titley had described the house as a “hoarder house,” but Younger, who was on scene a few hours after the first crews wrapped up, said it had been mostly packed with books.
“I walked through it after the fire, so you kind of get a different feel than when everything’s on fire,” Younger said. “This guy collected books. I mean, he had books – on racks – but everywhere, in boxes and stuff in the house. …This wasn’t like a hoarder house like where you go there and they’re keeping every kind of piece of garbage.”
Younger said the books and papers in the house “definitely” fuelled the fire, which broke windows and extended into the building’s structure.
“The house was quite heavily damaged,” Younger said. “It looks quite bad to me. In my opinion, they’ll probably tear it down.”
The cause of the fire is being investigated.
