Smoke detector saves residents from killer ‘backdraft’
Posted Dec 22, 2010 3:23 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Fire officials say it was a very close call for the residents of a home in Bowness this morning, when their house caught fire.
The blaze broke out from smoking material in a designated smoking room in the basement of a home at 44th Avenue and 80th Street Northwest just after 11 a.m.
Brian McAsey with the Calgary Fire Department tells 660News, thankfully a smoke detector alerted the residents and avoided potential tragedy.
“We’re very thankful that they didn’t open a door which, of course, would have introduced a huge amount of oxygen into a very hot fire and could have actually led to one of the occurences we usually have in these situations, backdraft, in which a fire which is growing very hot and had run out of fuel almost, give it some oxygen and what happens is you have a literal explosion of fire. It’s the number one killer of firefighters,” says McAsey.
Fire crews knocked down the fire quickly, rescued a dog and two cats and treated one of the residents for smoke inhalation until paramedics arrived.
Damage is estimated at around 15-thousand dollars.
