Fire again

Once again there has been a house fire in Arctic Bay, and once again we’ve been lucky as no one has been hurt.  Leah, got off the phone to say that there was fire and we went to the office window (which overlooks town) to see.  At that time we could see the smoke, but no fire and it looked like things were out of control. We spent some time trying to figure out which house it was, and then went to start the truck in case there was someone there we needed to give a hand to (not the fire department, we’d just get in the way, but relatives or friends who may need a warm truck or house for a bit).

That was when the power went out, and as I needed electricity to pump up a low tire… idea was squashed. But Leah was heading out anyway and swung by.  By this time the fire truck and water truck had both run out of water, so the fire flared up again and the house looked to be fully involved from here (the house is about 2/3’s the way across town).

Luckily everyone made it safely out of the house.  The scuttlebutt is that two young children were playing somehow with the furnace, and went in to wake the mother and smaller child to say that it was going to explode. Everyone got out and apparently the place went up shortly after that.

The sad fact is that up here, unless fortune smiles on you and a fire is caught really early on by a passing water truck, or is doused really quickly by the fire department, the chances are once a fire takes hold the house will burn to the ground.  The lack of consistent water supplies means that the fire will get beaten down, only to flare up when the water runs out, sometimes several times. 

But at the end of the day, no one got hurt, and that is all that really matters.