A skateboarder alerted residents to an early morning fire that gutted a home and damaged neighbouring buildings.
Six people have been displaced by the structure fire that destroyed one house and damaged a second home and a neighbouring apartment building.
Nanaimo Fire Rescue responded at about 1:40 a.m. Thursday, July 26 to the rental house, which was burning at Robarts Street in the Nob Hill neighbourhood.
Capt. Ennis Mond, Nanaimo Fire Rescue chief fire prevention officer, said the four residents in the home were alerted by a skateboarder who spotted the flames at the front of the house.
“A person that was outside at that time of the morning noticed smoke and fire from the front of the house and went and banged on the house with his skateboard and woke everybody up,” Mond said.
All the residents escaped without any reported injuries, but the home was completely destroyed.
“Two houses were damaged, so there’s the one that burned and then there was exposure damage to the house next door and then there was a little smoke exposure damage to an apartment … building behind,” Mond said.
Two residents from the neighbouring house have also been temporarily displaced.
“We’re still trying to get hold of the owner of the house,” Mond said.
The cause of the fire is under investigation. Nanaimo Fire Rescue investigators wish to speak with the witness who alerted the residents to the fire.
“We don’t know who that person is,” Mond said. “We’re looking for him because he was the first one to see the fire.”
Anyone with information about the fire is asked to call Nanaimo Fire Rescue’s non-emergency line at 250-753-7311.
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