A house caught fire on Osceola Road in Pines Lake Wednesday October 21 around 9:45 pm. Neighbors smelt smoke and immediately ran outside when alerted by an off-duty school crossing guard, She saw an ‘orange glow’ coming from the window and heard glass breaking. A seventeen year old neighbor saw it was her friends rental house and ran across the street to the house they currently live in to inform her of the devastating news. “I ran outside and I saw a small fire from the kitchen window. Then after I got the house owners I looked back at the house and saw that the fire had grown and spread from the kitchen to what looked like other rooms. I was astonished, the fire became so much bigger in just 30 seconds,” she recalled. As soon as the house owner heard the news, he ran out of the house and in attempt to stop the fire from spreading to nearby houses, he ran inside the burning building for a fire extinguisher. Once he heard “cracking” and felt the instability of the ceiling, he abandoned his plan.

The police and fire stations were called, with police arriving in around five minutes and fire trucks in approximately ten. The extra time led the fire to grow larger and spread throughout the attic of the house, coming out the other side. All five Wayne fire companies responded to the call and the streets were filled with seven fire trucks. Once beginning to extinguish the flame, it took the firemen until 11:45 to completely smother the fire.

The house was being renovated at the time of the fire, so fortunately no one was living in the building. The owners however had finished renovations the day of the fire, with inspections coming the next day. “It’s so devastating that the house caught on fire, especially since it was so close to being ending all of the renovations, but the good thing is that no one was living in the house, it was still early in the night and people were awake to notice the odd smell and the bright fire, and that it wasn’t a windy night so no other houses caught on fire,” adds the house owner. Police will continue to investigate the cause of the house fire for the following weeks. At this point, they are only certain that it began in the kitchen. Although certainly devastating financially, the neighbors are only grateful that the family is ok and no one was in the house at the time.