Witless Bay volunteer fire department chief Fabian St. Croix says the department received the call at 8:58 p.m. but when they arrived about twelve minutes later the house was fully ablaze, with flames shooting out all the windows as well as through the roof. He added that firefighters were lucky because they actually had access to a water supply in the small town since a water line that supplied the now closed fish plant passed nearby and had a hydrant hooked into it just meters away from the fire. Without a hydrant, he said, they would have had to shuttle water to the fire by tanker truck. St. Croix said the homeowners were not actually in the house at the time, since it was being renovated, but were on scene and watched from the road as the fire consumed the structure. It took the eighteen volunteer firefighters about thirty minutes to get the blaze under control. There were no injuries and no information was available as to what may have caused the fire.
