A house in Yarmouth’s south end was levelled after an early-morning fire on Wednesday.
There was no one in the Hueston Street home at the time and firefighters were able to keep the fire from spreading to a residence next door.
The fire call came in shortly after 2 a.m., said Peter Winship, a platoon chief with the Yarmouth Fire Department.
“There was heavy smoke when we arrived, so basically we just went into our normal operations of doing a 360 around the home to check for exposures (adjacent properties where the fire might spread) and anything else and to find where the fire may be in the home,” he said.
“We found a source of the fire. We tried to extinguish the fire from the exterior, then afterwards we were able to make entry for a short time, but the fire did get a hold of the structure itself and it made it difficult for operations inside.”
The house was located to the west of Mern’s restaurant, but there was a bit of a buffer between the diner and the house that burned, said Winship. The bigger concern, he said, was the property to the east of the burning structure.
“The concern was it (the fire) going into the other house, so we went into a defensive mode to protect the adjacent exposures,” he said.
Firefighters were able to keep the blaze from spreading, he said.
The RCMP already were on the scene when firefighters arrived and had notified the occupant of the house next door of the fire, Winship said, and the person had come out.
An excavator was brought in to level the stricken house.
Port Maitland and Eel Brook fire departments also responded to the fire call.
The fire marshal’s office has been contacted and the cause of the fire is under investigation, Winship said.
Firefighters were at the scene until shortly after 7 a.m., five hours or so after they had first arrived.
