Three recreational vehicles were destroyed Monday morning in Summerland when a fire broke out in one of them and quickly spread to the others.
“We had one trailer fully involved when we first arrived and then it quickly spread,” said Summerland fire chief Glen Noble.
The Summerland Fire Department was called to the Illahie Beach RV Park in the Trout Creek area just after 6 a.m. Monday.
“We were pretty quick to get it knocked down and contained just to those three units.”
Noble said there were two residents in each of the units, all of whom got out safely, along with a pet cat that was rescued by one of the residents. The three units, Noble explained, were semi-permanent homes, hooked into facilities at the RV park. Like mobile homes, he said, they were of light-weight construction.
“I think mobile homes are a lot better than they used to be now. There are new construction codes, but these are older RVs as well,” said Noble, estimating the age of the units as anywhere from 10 to 20 years old. “They are older and it is very lightweight construction so they tend to burn fairly rapidly.”
The cause of the fire is yet to be determined. The Summerland Fire Department has called on the provincial gas and electrical inspectors for help in the investigation, and they toured the scene with Noble on Monday.
“We will await their reports to see if they come up with anything,” he said. “We have an area of origin where the fire started, but we haven’t at this time been able to determine the exact cause.”