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Two fires hit Chilliwack over the weekend

A fire at a house undergoing renovations Friday and an electrical fire Saturday night kept firefighters busy over the weekend.

An older farm house on Cannor Road that was being prepped for major renovations went up in flames Friday night.

It took Chilliwack firefighters from four different fire halls to extinguish the blaze because of water supply issues.

When crews arrived, the structure was already fully involved, said Jeff Ullyot, assistant fire chief with Chilliwack Fire Department.

That meant they were battling "defensive" fire, and the focus was on keeping adjacent structures and fire crews safe.

The closest fire hydrant to the property was at the corner of Yale Road and Cannor Road, which required a 2400-foot relay of hoses to the site to provide a water source for crews.

"It took three or four fire engines to do that," he said.

At the time of the blaze, the structure in the 7400-block of Cannor Road was in the process of having drywall and wiring removed  in preparation for renovations.

In the end, the two-storey wood farm house built in the 1950s could not be saved.

Crews were on-scene until the early hours of the next morning to completely extinguish the fire.

Damage is "severe" and the house is now uninhabitable, said the fire official.

"The roof had collapsed, and the floor had collapsed so they couldn't get inside," said Ullyot. "Hotspots had to be extinguished from the exterior."

There was no one in the house at the time, and no firefighter injuries.

The cause of the fire is being investigated but is not considered suspicious.

Another fire call had to do with a downed power line that caused a fire and a power outage overnight Sunday on Cessna Drive off Airport Road.

Chilliwack firefighters were called to the scene before midnight on Feb. 3, to attend to the primary power line that had fallen down and ignited some hedges.

Since the dangling wire was live, it was arcing and creating a spectacular sight, but fire damage was confined to the hedges.

Chilliwack Fire crews couldn't do anything to extinguish the fire until the power was shut down by BC Hydro.

BC Hydro reported the cause online as "equipment failure" and the outage affected more than 2,300 households, but it not yet known what caused the failure.

jfeinberg@theprogress.com

Twitter.com/chwkjourno



Jennifer Feinberg

About the Author: Jennifer Feinberg

I have been a Chilliwack Progress reporter for 20+ years, covering the arts, city hall, as well as Indigenous, and climate change stories.
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