Pair of suspicious fires in St Catharines

There have been two suspicious overnight house fires in St Catharines.

Crews were called just before midnight to a basement fire at a home on St George Street.

No one was hurt. A man and woman sleeping in the house were alerted by neighbour Jonathan Mattatall who told CHCH News he saw flames in the basement.

“Smoke (was) rolling out of all the windows, we ran to the back, ran up the stairs, banged on the door, got them awake, they opened the door up and the smoke was probably from the roof to mid-waistline, just black smoke rolling out. Got them to get out and while we were running there my uncle was on the phone calling the fire department and getting them to come down.”

CHCH News was also told that a tenant living in the house was evicted on Saturday.

Within 14 minutes of that fire, another suspicious house fire started less than two blocks away. This blaze started in the attic of a home on Concord Avenue in St Catharines.

Crews were able to quickly put it out, and no one was hurt. St Catharines fire chief Mark Melenbacher wants the Ontario Fire Marshall’s office to probe both fires.

“We ended up calling Niagara Falls to respond to the second fire. Just prior to their arrival we were able to send them to our headquarters to basically cover the city. We also implemented a recall system where we call back our off-duty full-time firefighters and they man a truck or two trucks as we need.”

“This incidence with back-to-back fires within 14 minutes, we were certainly stretched.”

An aerial truck from the Niagara Falls fire department was called to St Catharines to standby.