Two men on an upper balcony, trapped by thick billowing smoke in the home below, were rescued Tuesday by the North Rustico fire department.
"Around 1:30 in the morning a call came across that there was a couple of trapped individuals in a house fire, a two-story building," said Fire Chief Jamie Masson.
He said the department arrived at the home in the North Rustico community to find the main floor filled with smoke.
"They sleep upstairs and the smoke alarms went off, which warned them that something was going on," said Masson. "They tried to get out of the house by going down the stairs but realized it was full of smoke that was coming up so they went to the one bedroom with the balcony on it and they stayed there until we arrived.
"We got them off with the ladder and then we dealt with the inside," said Masson.
"They said it was probably a stove fire, they may have left the stove on and that's what it ended up being," he said.
"It was a small, contained fire. The stove is probably burned out but other than that, everything around it was fine, except for a lot of smoke damage."
