Working smoke alarms are getting the credit for making sure a house fire near downtown Windsor didn’t end up being fatal.
Windsor Fire and Rescue crews were called around 10:30 p.m. Thursday to a fire at 868 Tuscarora Street near Marentette Avenue.
Officials say it’s a single-family home, but individual rooms in the home are being rented out.
Chief Fire Prevention Officer John Smith says smoke alarms were just installed in each bedroom on May 5 after a complaint was filed, resulting in an inspection by a fire prevention officer.
Smith says the fire started in a bedroom, but no one was in there at the time; luckily, the smoke alarm did alert the people in the home to the fire so they could get out.
Some of the people living there tried to remove some items on fire, which resulted in some non-life-threatening injuries.
Two people were taken to the hospital for treatment, including one person with burns to their arm, while another person was treated at the scene.
Smith says without the early detection by the smoke alarms, this could have been much worse.
“They don’t hear that, and they don’t know the fire is there, especially after midnight or if somebody else is sleeping; it could be a total loss. It is probably a total loss at this point, but what we have is a couple of burns that are minor in nature, and we don’t have any fatalities. We want people to get out; we don’t want fatalities,” he says.
In all, five people have been displaced.
Smith says if you’re going to rent out homes to people, make sure have working smoke alarms at the very minimum.
“Most of the rentals that we’re finding that people are renting rooms out in these single-family residences, they don’t have working smoke alarms in a bedroom. We don’t know who you’re renting the room out to; who you’re renting the room out to doesn’t know who is sleeping beside them, so at least if something happens in the bedroom itself, we have early detection to get that person out of the bedroom, and they can notify the rest of the people in the house,” he says.
Smith says they don’t know the exact number of single-family homes that are renting rooms and meeting fire safety standards, but they are receiving more and more reports.
“When we do come across one, it’s usually through a complaint from the public, and we send a fire prevention officer out to these occupancies. We are requesting and we’re enforcing; we have ways in the fire code to enforce a smoke alarm in every bedroom at the minimum, on top of the smoke alarm outside in the hallway and the carbon monoxide detection in every level,” he says.
The damage is estimated at $400,000, which includes damage to some vehicles in the driveway.
Officials say while the fire originated in the bedroom, the cause remains under investigation.