The Keats Island community came together in a panic to put out a sauna fire last Saturday night. Neighbours and boaters arrived at the scene as the news of the fire spread through shouting and phone calls. People in a bucket brigade carried ocean water up to the cabin in Plumpers Cove, where a sauna in the lower level was on fire, according to islander Scott Benson. The bucket water contained the fire until a fire pump arrived by barge from Keats Camp, with young camp counsellors and Benson, the barge's owner. Once beached, the barge served as a bridge to access water for buckets and smaller hoses instead of people standing in waist-high water. People were using garden hoses but the well water from each neighbour's hose was running dry. The camp's pump had trouble getting going, but once it did, the youth from the camp hosed down the house until vacationing and retired firefighters arrived from the Eastbourne side of the island. No one was injured from the fire, Benson said.
The sauna and the area around it on the lower level were ruined, and the rest of the house had smoke and water damage throughout.
Benson heard of the fire around 9:30 p.m. when he got a phone call from one of the neighbours next to the fire. Benson then phoned people on the other side of the island. After Benson arrived, he heard neighbours yelling from house to house there was a fire. At one point there were at least 60 people there, arriving with buckets and pots, Benson said. The fire burned for at least an hour.
There is no fire department on Keats Island, so people were taking fire control into their own hands.
"They were islanders concerned about the whole island going up," Benson said.
Tom Johnstone, a retired firefighter, came over from the Eastbourne side with a few others and a pump to help with the blaze.
When they arrived, John-stone said the fire was out so they checked the walls and area for any spreading fire.
The wooden sauna containing a wood-burning stove was in the lowest of three levels of the house on a cliff steeper than a 45-degree angle, Johnstone said.
"Another couple of minutes and that thing would have been gone," he said. He added the Thompsons, the couple who lease the property from Keats Camp, were very fortunate. Anyone who was able to assist, did, he said.
The cause of the fire is not known.
Another witness to the fire, Dave Short, was out on his boat in Plumpers Cove when he heard someone shouting "fire" from shore. He saw thick white smoke coming from the house. He then went and helped with the bucket brigade, which was carrying buckets up the 50-foot cliff to the house. Meanwhile his wife Lynn gathered fire extinguishers from nearby boats.
Forty minutes later, the barge arrived with Benson, whom Short called a "saviour." The pump from the barge died a couple times, so the bucket brigade kept going. Short figures the bucket brigade was working for an hour and a half. Short is concerned with the island's lack of fire equipment and procedure.
