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The results of a suspicious blaze that occurred early Saturday morning on Forrest Drive. Firefighters successfully doused large flames that engulfed part of the carport, foreground, before the three-story condominium could catch fire. - Peter Varga/NNSL photo

SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - A large three-storey condominium complex on Forrest Drive was narrowly saved from flames early Saturday morning when the Yellowknife Fire Department extinguished a suspicious blaze.

The fire destroyed part of a wooden carport next to the building.

"This is what we consider an incredible save," deputy fire chief Darcy Hernblad said at the scene, noting all the structures involved were made of dry wood. "What we're dealing with is suspicious."

The NWT Office of the Fire Marshal is investigating the cause of the blaze.

A passing taxi-driver first alerted RCMP about the fire. The fire department responded at 4:28 a.m., arriving three minutes later, Hernblad said. Responding to the incident were two department officers and 12 firefighters. Damage was estimated at $50,000 to structures and $50,000 to contents. None of the 25 units in the complex, known as Forrest Drive Condominiums, were damaged.

A windowless section of the building's side wall next to the carport was charred black from flames, which consumed an empty section of the carport normally occupied by two vehicles. Two other carport spaces were also damaged, one of them containing a tenant's pickup truck consumed by the flames.

RCMP were on hand to evacuate a section of the complex.

Tenants nearest to the blaze awoke to the sound of loud crackling and huge flames between 4 a.m. and 4:30.

"It sounded like a fireplace or something, but just so loud," said tenant Jenny Rausch, who was greeted by the sight of huge flames outside her window.

"It was bright enough that my whole room was pulsing with firelight," she recalled. She called the fire department, but was told they were already on their way.

The fire initially started on an empty parking space in the cedar carport, which appeared to catch quickly, fire officials at the scene said.

When firefighters arrived large flames from the carport, located about 2.5 metres from the side of the building, began to char the side wall of the condo - also made of cedar - and creep up toward the roof.

"This kind of dry cedar wood, when it got going, it threw off such intense heat, the heat got the side of the apartment block going here," said Hernblad.

Fire officials noted that the condominium building was saved from catching fire by a matter of minutes. Heat generated by large flames began hitting aluminum soffits at the top of the side wall - threatening to set the roof ablaze.

"If the flames get up in there, it means the flame gets into the roof space," Hernblad said. "Then it's a really, really difficult fire to fight."

According to initial sightings of the fire, "it grew very quickly," said Fire Marshal Stephen Moss, who assessed the scene early Saturday morning. "That's not typical of a fire of this nature. It would develop slowly."

Moss' initial suspicion was that arson was involved - and that accelerants may have been used to start the fire.

"We're going to determine if there is an accelerant used, and what exactly it is," said Moss. "If it turns up that we get a witness and identify a suspect, we'll know what they used to set the fire."