Five families were displaced and a pair of structures destroyed after a fire at a trailer park in Cassidy yesterday.
Cranberry Volunteer Fire Department responded to a call of a trailer on fire at Timberlands Mobile Home Park on Hallberg Road at 4:30 p.m. Friday, July 21, with assistance from departments from North Cedar and Extension, as well as Lantzville, Nanaimo and Ladysmith.
Two mobile homes were destroyed in the fire and a third suffered significant damage.
Cranberry fire chief Ron Gueulette arrived on scene to find one trailer fully ablaze and two adjacent homes starting to catch fire. A large fir tree had also ignited.
Gueulette said he started directing fire apparatuses and firefighters into position to battle the blaze and called for mutual aid from fire departments for more firefighters and equipment, including water tenders to start ferrying water to the site, as volunteer firefighters already on scene struggled to keep the intense blaze from spreading beyond the three structures.
He said the fire appears to have originated in the rear of the mobile home, possibly due to a malfunction relating to an oxygen concentrator unit used to provide oxygen that a resident relies on to assist breathing. However, what actually sparked the fire will be difficult to determine given the extent of damage to the structure.
“That could be it, but we don’t know. We may never know,” Gueulette said.
All occupants of the three mobile homes were accounted for and no one was injured. Residents of two mobile homes on either side of the fire scene were also evacuated overnight as a safety precaution.
Gueulette said the residents of the five homes were assisted by emergency social services.
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chris.bush@nanaimobulletin.com
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