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Fire hits Hay River duplex

Paul Bickford
Northern News Services
Published Monday, August 24, 2009

HAY RIVER - An intense fire destroyed a duplex in Hay River on Aug. 17.

"The whole building is a total write-off," said Hay River Fire Chief Trent Atwell.

The blaze left two families - a total of five people - homeless.

NNSL photo/graphic

Firefighters battle the fast-moving fire in a Hay River duplex Aug. 17. - Paul Bickford/NNSL photo

There were five people - not all residents - in the duplexes at the time of the fire, but there were no serious injuries.

Fundraising efforts are currently underway in Hay River to help the families.

Firefighters were called to the duplex on Caribou Crescent at about 4 p.m.

The blaze appeared to be largely confined to half of the duplex, but Atwell said fire got into the other half of the building through the attic and it also suffered smoke damage.

The fire chief had no estimate of the cost of damages.

Bill Reimer, an assistant fire marshal in Fort Smith, said it appears the fire started on the outside of the duplex.

Reimer said two possible causes are being considered.

One is that the fire started in a freezer that was outdoors and plugged into an outlet on the side of the building.

Reimer noted freezers are designed to be indoors and their cords should not be exposed to the elements.

The second possible related cause is there may have been an electrical problem where the freezer was plugged in.

"Those are two things we haven't been able to rule out," Reimer said, noting some items have been sent to a laboratory for further examination.

Along with the duplex, a car parked in a driveway was destroyed.

The fire, which was very fast-moving, spread to a fence and a telephone pole.

Reimer said some building materials are a nation-wide concern, explaining the duplex had vinyl siding and a one-inch layer of bead board between the sheathing and siding.

"When you cover a house with plastic and (a fire) starts from the outside, it tends to burn very quickly," he said, although he noted the duplex appears to have been built to the code of the day.

The fire also cut telephone and Internet service to about 200 NorthwesTel customers on the Hay River Reserve and in Hay River, along Riverview Drive between Gaetz Drive and Diamond Jenness Secondary School.

Bonnie Venton Ross, a NorthwesTel spokesperson in Whitehorse, said the service interruption was caused when a cable burned on a telephone pole.

"It was a major line," she said.

A crew in Hay River and another from Yellowknife had all services repaired by mid-day Tuesday.

One customer affected by the cut line was H.H. Williams Memorial Hospital.

David Hughes, acting CEO of the Hay River Health and Social Services Authority, said there was no problem with emergency services, such as calling an ambulance.

Hughes also noted NorthwesTel set up call forwarding of ambulance calls to a cell phone at the hospital's nursing station.

Anyone calling for an ambulance would not have noticed a difference, he said. "It was basically seamless to them."

Telephone calls within the hospital were unaffected during the outage.