Fire damage at Kleinburg home estimated at $5M; several luxury cars destroyed

Yorkregion.com
May 17, 2016
By Lisa Queen

Investigators are searching for the cause of a late-night house fire in Vaughan Monday night that caused $5 million in damage and destroyed several luxury vehicles.

The fire at 18 Autumn Grove Ct., near Major Mackenzie Drive and Islington Avenue in Kleinburg, began in the garage just before 11:30 p.m. and quickly spread to the house, Vaughan Deputy Fire Chief Deryn Rizzi said.

“Firefighters arrived on scene. There was heavy fire involvement in the garage, which had extended into the house,” she said.

Six people in the home at the time escaped before firefighters arrived. At least one person was up watching TV at the time, she said.

One person was taken to hospital with minor injuries, but it was not related to the fire, Rizzi said.

“Due to the rapid extension of fire into the house, the firefighters were required to take a defensive fire attack. That means they fought the fire from the outside because of the extensive fire conditions,” she said.

“The focus then was on aerial operations, so ladder operations. We had two aerial trucks up just to provide a large volume of water.”

Firefighters worked to prevent the fire from spreading to other properties and the neighbouring houses on either side sustained minimal damage, Rizzi said.

An investigator from the Ontario Fire Marshal’s office and two from Vaughan Fire are investigating the cause of the blaze, but it is not considered suspicious, Rizzi said.

“There was significant loss because this house was a large structure, 3,000 to 4,000 square feet. Because of the size of the home, the contents of the home, multiple high-end vehicles in the garage, we’re estimating that the damage will be close to $5 million,” Rizzi said.

“There were working smoke alarms in the house, which is very important. After the East Gwillimbury fire (which killed four members of the Dunsmuir family in March 2013), we really want to stress that smoke alarms are necessary devices to alert residents to a fire, but it does nothing to suppress a fire. That’s what people need to understand. Residents may only have as little as one to two minutes to safely escape a burning home and only a fire sprinkler has the ability to contain a fire until the firefighters arrive.”

This home did not have a sprinkler system, Rizzi said.

Vaughan Fire has run a program called Alarms for Life, during which firefighters have checked homes for working fire alarms on each floor of 3,000 homes as required by law, and fewer than 50 per cent are in compliance, she said.