A family in a northwest neighbourhood encountered smoke and an unusual odour early Wednesday evening after a fire broke out in their attached garage.
Jeffrey Anderson says he was cooking dinner in his home in Royal Oak shortly after 6:00 p.m. while his wife had a nap. “I went upstairs and my wife was like ‘it kind of smells bad’,” said Anderson. “We have a natural gas fireplace upstairs. I checked that.”
“My daughter could see the smoke coming out of the garage from the upstairs window so I ran downstairs to see where it was coming from and noticed it was coming from the door attached to the garage.”
Anderson says the alarm inside his home was activated and his instincts kicked in. “Just grabbed everybody as quick as we could and got them out of the house with the dog and the rabbit. It was pretty quick getting out.”
Fire crews were deployed to the two-storey home on Royal Elm Way and encountered smoke coming from the eaves of the building. The fire was extinguished before it could spread to the attached home or neighbouring residences.
“Crews arrived quickly and dealt with the situation rapidly,” explained Acting District Chief Rouge Ashmead of the Calgary Fire Department. “There was minor damage to the garage.”
Ashmead says the two adults, their three children and their two pets are all accounted for and are in good shape.
The cause of the fire has not been confirmed and remains under investigation.
