A July 17 fire reduced this home on Cottonwood Drive to ruins. Photo by Paul Everest
OSOYOOS TIMES-July 22, 2009
By Paul Everest – Osoyoos Times
Five people escaped an early morning fire that destroyed a house on Cottonwood Drive on July 17.
Police were the first to arrive at the scene and roughly 25 members of the Osoyoos Volunteer Fire Department arrived at 6821 Cottonwood Dr. at about 1:30 a.m. to find the house fully engulfed in flames.
“It was through the roof,” said Chief Rick Jones.
Houses to the left and right of the burning home were on fire as well, Jones said, and so firefighters concentrated on putting out those fires before tackling the main blaze.
The owner of the house, Richard West, was not home that evening, Jones said.
But three people, at least one of whom was a tenant, were in the home at the time of the fire and two were staying in a motor home parked in the house’s driveway.
All five got out without injury, Jones said.
“It was a very lucky fire.”
A cat belonging to one of the home’s tenants, which went missing at the time of the fire, was later found safe.
Although investigators are still looking into the cause of the fire, Jones said it is believed the blaze started in the kitchen.
Mark Crofton, who lives in the basement of a house next to the destroyed home, said he was asleep when he heard screaming and yelling and thought someone was being robbed or attacked.
When he came outside, Crofton saw flames billowing out from the home’s front window and within 10 seconds the entire structure was engulfed in flames.
Looking at the house in the daylight on July 17, one could see only charred wood, melted plastic and ash.
Jones said the kitchen had collapsed into the home’s basement.
The motor home was a blackened mass which appeared to have melted into the driveway.
Across the street was a boat which was parked on the property at the time of the fire, partially scorched and melted.
Jones said it was department members who pulled the boat onto the street so that firefighters could get closer to the burning house.
The houses on both sides of the property sustained some damage from the blaze.
Crofton said he began watering the side of the house where he lives when the fire broke out and had to move furniture to one side of a balcony at the front of his home away from the flames.
Part of the roof of the house where he lives was charred while the heat caused glass and some of the siding on the side facing the burning home to crack and buckle.
Roger Mastin, who lives in the house on the other side of the burnt home, showed off melted blinds inside his home the morning after the fire.
Some of his windows had cracked from the heat and there is water damage in the rear of his home.
Mastin said he heard screams from people living in the burnt house and at first saw a little blaze before a “big ball of fire” exploded from the home.
Jones said crews left the scene at about 7 a.m. but had to return during the day on July 17 and again on July 18 to put out some hot spots.
The people who were in the house were treated by Emergency Social Services, he added.
The owner of the house declined a request from the Osoyoos Times for an interview.
