People were forced to flee from their homes at around 3 a.m. Wednesday after flames shot up 30 feet into the sky.
“It was an intense, intense heat. When I stepped onto the patio I could feel the heat right away,” recalled neighbour Mike White.
The blaze happened at a workshop on a property on Southwind Drive in Lantzville.
“We arrived last night to find this workshop at the back of this property fully involved and with fire spreading to the neighbours’ garage and carriage home as well as two RV’s here on site,” said Lantzville Volunteer Fire Department chief Neil Rukus.
Flames were threatening the home next door belonging to Julie Steward, who got her whole family out and watched as volunteer firefighters tried to extinguish the fire.
“They were amazing and unfortunately we ran out of water and I was watching some of the back buildings catching on fire. And within minutes they had water again. And that’s basically what saved the fire from going onto our property and taking our house,” said Steward.
For the first time ever, Lantzville Volunteer Fire received an automatic aid response from neighbouring Nanoose & East Wellington Volunteer Fire departments and those crews brought much-needed water to the scene.
“In this area up here we don’t have fire hydrants,” said Rukus. so we had to rely on our automatic aid agreement with Nanoose Fire and East Wellington,” said Rukus.
Fortunately, no one was injured. But residents fear the fire could have torn through their entire neighbourhood with all the trees linking homes. They’re now urging Lantzville to install a fire hydrant to protect them.
“Very quickly realized how scary it is to not have water supply in the Lantzville district to put a fire out. This would have been horrific if this happened a month ago,” said White.
Investigators will now try to determine what caused the fire with what little is left of this workshop and RV’s that have burned.
Skye Ryan
