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Tenant describes escape from fire

By: Staff Writer

Posted: 09/11/2012 8:17 AM | Comments: 0

A recently renovated rental house in the 200 block of Furby Street caught fire Tuesday morning. The fire spread to the second and third floor of the two-and-a-half storey house. Two passersby ran to the warn three people living in the house. (KEN GIGLIOTTI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS) Photo Store

A cigarette discarded in a planter filled with peat moss appears to be the cause of an early-morning fire that destroyed a two-and-a-half-storey house in West Broadway.

Brooke Gamey, who lived in a suite in the house in the 200 block of Furby St., was alerted by a passerby who knocked on her back window about 4 a.m.

"I saw the window all lit up with orange," she said.

She knocked on the door of a neighbouring suite, told the occupant to call 911, and they fled outside.

Gamey said she was grateful to the man who rapped on her window when he saw the fire.

"Thanks to him, I’m in good condition and not burned, so this is one of the happiest days of my life. Without that guy knocking on my window, the fire would have spread throughout the house."

She said fire officials believe a possible cause of the blaze was a plant container containing peat moss and soil. A visitor to the home had tried to extinguish a lit cigarette in the container at 8:30 p.m. the previous evening, about seven hours before the fire began.

Three people escaped from the building before firefighters arrived shortly after 4:15 a.m.

Smoke and water damage at the rooming house is estimated at $150,000.

There were also two fires within nine hours of each other on Magnus Avenue Monday night and early Tuesday morning.

Fire crews were called to a house fire in the 500 block around 7:15 p.m. and to a house under construction in the 300 block shortly before 4 a.m. There were no injuries in either incident.

All three fires are under investigation.

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