BANGOR — When Maria Rodrigues arrived home to her house in Bangor, P.E.I Monday afternoon she saw flames shooting out from an upstairs bedroom and smoke billowing out from other windows.
“We left the house around 12:45 and me and my husband went down to Charlottetown to pick up our children at school and we came back just like normal and we saw all the smoke coming out of the house and all the flames on the other side of the house in the back …my husband just banged through the door to get the keys to the truck and that was it…and we called 911,” Rodrigues said in an interview as Morell firefighters cleared away their equipment.
She and her husband, along with their children and a dog, lived in the home since last summer and all are safe, she said. They have insurance and plan to rebuild.
P.E.I. Fire Marshall Dave Rossiter was on the scene and said the fire was due to an electrical fault just above the attic space in the back porch.
“The fire started there and extended up through inside the wall and came out through a bedroom window and firefighters stopped it there,” he said during an interview at the scene.
He said damage was contained to the back porch area and it actually looked worse from the outside then from the inside.
"... my husband just banged through the door to get the keys to the truck and that was it…and we called 911,” - Maria Rodrigues
“The fire basically came up the wall and out through the window” and that prevented a lot of damage. There was minimal smoke and water damage to the rest of the house.
The fire call came in around 3:30 p.m. and Morell fire department responded along with backup from St. Peters, Mount Stewart and Cardigan.
…The Guardian will have more on this story in the print-edition of the newspaper tomorrow.
