Calgary firefighters battle blaze in Highland Park

Firefighters are investigating what caused an early morning house fire in the community of Highland Park on Wednesday. 

Emergency crews arrived in the 500 block of 35 Avenue N.W. at around 5 a.m. to find flames eating away at the home and thick smoke filling the air.  

District Chief Gordon Best with the fire department says the blaze was "deep seeded" and had probably been burning for a couple of hours before they were called.

Best said the fire was stubborn and hard to acess, so crews made the decision to vertically ventilate the home.

"If you cut a hole in the roof, obviously the heat and the gasses rise. It's a way for us to channel the smoke and hot gasses away from where we're trying to (work)," he explained.

"Now they're just going in to pull the ceiling down to see where the fire started and fully extinguish it."

Best says because of the volatile nature of the fire, crews weren't able to get all the way through the house to see if anyone was inside, though it appears it was unoccupied when the blaze started.

No injuries have been reported.

Speaking to CTV News, property owner Gursharan Pabla said he has plans to develop the land to make way for multi-family homes.

"I was a little bit surprised to get a call at 6:30 in the morning," he said. "We might demolish a little earlier, considering the damage, but it’s not clear at the moment."

"It is insured. We usually insure our property, so that's not something that we fudge the lines on. But the insurance policy stipulates that we need to rebuild the same thing, and we want to demolish this and rebuild significantly more units. So for us to put in a claim is quite moot and counterproductive to our objectives."

- With files from Austin Lee