2alarm blaze decimates home in Middle Sackville

CITYnews halifax / By Natasha O’Neill

Crews were called to a fully engulfed two-storey house fire early Friday morning.

When they arrived around 3:40 a.m., acting district chief, Ron Powell told CityNews, that crews tackled it defensively, meaning they were not able to go inside the home.

“The interior of the house was (burning) so they went defensive on arrival. Everybody was accounted for and out of the house,” he said in an interview.

The blaze was on McCabe Lake Drive in Middle Sackville. Crews from Station 10 responded in eight minutes to a house lit up by flames and with thick black smoke in the air.

Shortly after, a second alarm to dispatch additional crews was called, and support came from Bedford, Fall River, Upper Tantallon and Mount Uniacke. Powell said that about 10 to 12 trucks were on site at the height of the fire.

This area doesn’t have fire hydrants, so crews used a tanker truck system to bring water from a source 1.5 kilometres away.

As of mid-morning on Friday, crews are still on scene dousing any hots spots and waiting for an excavator to arrive. The family of five’s home is destroyed, and only the garage portion of the structure remains.

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Powell said the difficulty of fighting these types of fires has to do with the build of the home.

“Mainly it’s just the modern-day home construction,” he said. “Once the fires get going on the interior they’re basically hard to put out due to the fast-moving content of them.”

No injuries were reported, and three people escaped the home. Two others were away at the time.

Fire investigators are on scene. People are being asked to avoid the area.

Crews responded to a house fully engulfed in flames early Friday morning. (Halifax Professional Fire Fighters)