A home in the 6300 block of Marmot Road in East Porpoise Bay was destroyed by fire on Tuesday, Aug. 4.
Sechelt Fire Chief Trevor Pike said the blaze broke out around 5 p.m.
When firefighters arrived the building was fully involved, and the fire had begun to spread into the brush behind the home.
Five Sechelt trucks and 28 firefighters responded, including the department’s ladder truck, which Pike said was instrumental in keeping the fire from spreading further into the brush or damaging the two neighbouring homes.
It took firefighters two hours to put out the fire. One firefighter was treated at the scene for heat exhaustion and a woman living at the home was taken to hospital for observation as a precaution.
Pike said a crew from Roberts Creek was called in for support and one from the Halfmoon Bay Fire Department was brought in under the mutual aid agreement to stage at the Sechelt fire hall. That crew actually had to go out on an accident call while the Sechelt crews were at the scene on Marmot Road.
The cause remains under investigation, but Pike said the fire started on the outside of the building and made its way up an exterior wall into the attic, where it began to spread into the structure.
The Marmot Road fire was the seventh structure fire in the Sechelt fire protection area since early July, and Pike said the cause of one of those fires, in a vacant building off of Tower Road in West Sechelt, is considered suspicious.
Friends and family of the young couple who lived in the home – and are expecting their first child soon – have set up an online fundraiser through the GoFundMe platform (https://gf.me/u/ymxdj5) which had brought in more than $3,000 by the morning after the fire.
