CAMBRIDGE, N.S. — A resident of Cambridge is lucky to have escaped injury after the vehicle he was working on caught fire.
Christopher Spencer, the chief of the Summerville Volunteer Fire Department, said they were on scene at the Highway 215 location quickly and acted fast to knock down the blaze before it spread.
“We received a call at about 12:18 p.m. to respond to the scene of a vehicle fire, that had potentially spread into an adjacent structure, a garage,” Spencer said.
Spencer said the fire was knocked down quickly, while they cooled down the adjacent structure.
Damage was minimized to the structure, but Spence said some of the siding did melt from the heat.
A ride-on lawnmower adjacent to the truck was also destroyed in the fire.
“That just happened to be his most favourite ride-on lawnmower,” he said. “The homeowner had been doing some maintenance to the truck at the time of the fire, was attempting to start the vehicle, when there was a backfire resulting in the combustion of some gas, perhaps from a loose fuel line.”
Luckily nobody was injured, he said.
Several fire departments responded to scene or assisted with mutual aid including: Walton, Brooklyn, Noel, Kennetcook, Rawdon and Windsor.
He added that one of the biggest challenges was having enough members to respond during a workday.
Spencer said that people should always have a fire extinguisher close by whenever working on a vehicle.
“A fire extinguisher at hand would have minimized this or made it a relatively benign event,” he said.
