Crews responded to several fires on Vancouver Island Thursday, including a trailer fire at an RV campground in Courtenay.
Residents at the Maple Pool Campground were awakened Thursday morning by a fire that consumed a trailer.
“One of the owners was burned and sent to the hospital, but he should be OK,” said Maple Pool owner Jin Lin, whose husband responded to the blaze about 8:30 a.m.
No fire was evident when her husband patrolled the park at 8 a.m., but Lin said they heard a commotion while having breakfast shortly thereafter. “It was so, so fast,” she said.
The owner of the trailer was trying to fight the blaze with a personal fire extinguisher, to no avail. When the fire grew beyond their control, Lin said, they used a small excavator to pull a neighbouring trailer from its spot, to prevent the fire from spreading to other sites in the campground.
“We were worried about a propane tank inside that trailer,” Lin said.
The couple who owned the fifth-wheel camper, which was destroyed, escaped. Their dog, however, did not survive.
“She was very emotional,” Lin said of one of the owners. “Exactly what happened we don’t know, but RCMP have put yellow tape around the site, and we are waiting for instructions.”
Crews were called to the campground for a similar situation in May, when a resident inside a trailer engulfed in flames was pulled to safety through a window.
The second structure fire in as many days saw Nanaimo crews battle a blaze in a residential neighbourhood.
The first started Thursday at 9 p.m. in a duplex on Railway Avenue near Fifth Street. It quickly spread to a neighbouring duplex, resulting in the displacement of five individuals.
“Emergency social services processed four of them,” said Nanaimo Fire Rescue assistant chief Greg Norman.
One resident received some burns to the upper body, and was sent to Nanaimo Regional General Hospital, and later flown to Victoria. Further details were not available, he added.
The cause of the fire is not yet known, but the site was secured overnight,” Norman said. “The fire was brought under control and extinguished rather quickly, effectively and efficiently.”
Norman is cautioning residents to be vigilant with regard to fire safety during the summer.
“It’s unfortunate, but people have to be a lot more heightened when it’s really dry out. Everything is dry.”
