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A family was left distraught Monday evening after a car fire swept through their large home on Pipeline Road north of Winnipeg, destroying the two-storey house.

Pipeline was closed to traffic over the evening rush hour about a kilometre north of the Perimeter Highway and for hours afterward.

Three volunteer fire departments — West St. Paul, St. Andrews and Stony Mountain — fought the blaze that started around 4:30 p.m. and sent clouds of black smoke that could be seen from kilometres away.

West St. Paul Fire Capt. Ken Azaransky said there were no injuries reported in the fire at 3169 Pipeline Rd.

“The fire started in a vehicle in an attached garage and carried on into the attic and the rest of the house,” Azaransky said.

The Office of the Fire Commissioner is investigating the blaze and as of Monday evening there was no official damage estimate.

There was no one in the house at the time other than one person in the garage who escaped, the fire chief said.

Four people stood for hours across the street, watching the fire. Bystanders identified them as the family who lived in the house.

One tearful young woman with the group could only nod in agreement when asked whether the burning house was her family’s dream home.

The family declined any other comment.

Neighbours said the homeowners were an extended family who had built the house themselves and moved in last summer.

“They were just doing the detail work inside,” said the woman, a neighbour who identified herself as Geralyn. “They built this house, too, the one we’re in right now,” the woman said, gesturing to a two-storey home next door.

The neighbour declined to disclose the family’s name or identify their business, other than it was in construction.

The stretch of Pipeline north of the Perimeter is largely wide-open prairie with the occasional subdivision.

Meanwhile, the plumes of smoke, clearly visible from the Perimeter Highway, drew in various passersby.

“Oh, please don’t let that be my house,” said one woman who spotted black clouds of smoke and turned off the highway to check out the fire.

She said it wasn’t her home.

“I live further down the road,” she said.

There were two ambulances on standby at the scene, tucked in behind pumper trucks and tanker trucks from the three volunteer fire departments.

They eventually pulled out, leaving the scene to the firefighters when it became clear no one was hurt or in need of medical attention.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca