Two people were taken to hospital following a early-afternoon house fire in South Surrey Monday.
Crews from six firehalls were dispatched to the 14500-block of 17 Avenue – just west of the South Surrey Indoor Pool – at around 12:30 p.m.
When they arrived, there were “full flames, smoke, super-heated upstairs,” Battalion Chief Brian Carmichael told Peace Arch News.
“This was what we would call a working house fire. The one bedroom upstairs has been consumed.”
Seven people call the blue, two-storey house home. While there initially was concern for the tenant whose room was destroyed in the fire, it was quickly determined that just two people were home at the time the blaze broke out, and both were able to escape.
Both were taken to hospital for smoke inhalation.
PAN reporter Aaron Hinks was the second resident home when the fire broke out. He fled the house barefoot, with only the clothes he was wearing and his cellphone.
Hinks, 28, described the scene inside the house as “crazy.” He said he was in his first-floor room when the homeowner “just comes running into the room, ‘Aaron, Aaron, Aaron, help,’” he said.
The homeowner was scrambling to throw buckets of water on the fire, Hinks said, but, after trying to help for a short while – each time getting hit with “a wave of smoke” when the bedroom door was opened – he quickly realized they had to get out.
“I had to drag her out,” Hinks said.
Carmichael told PAN shortly before 1:30 p.m. that a fire investigator was already on the scene to try and determine cause. He did not know when the residents would be able to return home.
