[projekktor id=’16828′]
(Updated)
The parents of former NHL player Paul Bissonette are lucky to be alive tonight after their Welland home was destroyed by fire. The blaze started in their garage. And it wasn’t smoke or flames that jolted the couple out of bed, it was canisters and tires exploding.
There is not much left of the Bissonette’s home in Welland. Their Ford Escort is unrecognizable. Everything else in the garage is a charred wreck. The fire started about 4:30 Friday morning.
Tom Doherty is a next door neighbour: “We got everybody out of the house. We didn’t know with the wind and fire what was going to happen.”
At the same time, neighbour Mike Courtney was jolted out of bed by what sounded like thunder: “The whole street was lit up because the fire was coming through the garage door. So the first thing I thought was, I better get my car out of the driveway because if it spread, we could lose our place too.”
The neighbours say when they got out here, the Bissonette’s were standing in the roadway wrapped only in their housecoats. They looked distraught and helpless as they watched their house burn.
Their son Paul Bissonette a former NHL’er tweeted: “huge thank you to the Welland Fire Department for saving half my parents house this morning and keeping them safe…you guys rock.”
The fire started in the garage. Investigators don’t see anything suspicious that could have sparked it.
Welland Fire Dept. Deputy Chief Brian Kennedy: “It’s probably one of the most dangerous places in your home for combustibles and fuels. There was a propane tank in here, a snowblower.
What about those sounds neighbours heard?
Kennedy: “There was a propane cylinder in there. A spare tank that was venting at the time firefighters arrived. So there would be a loud hissing noise accompanying that.”
The tires of the car would have been popping.
Because there have been so many garage fires in Ontario, the Association of Fire Chiefs tabled a resolution just a few weeks ago asking for the building code to be changed to make heat detectors mandatory in attached garages of new homes.
In the meantime, the fire chiefs recommend you install a photoelectric smoke and heat detector in your garage.
A $30 detector might have saved $200,000 in fire damage.
— Paul Bissonnette (@BizNasty2point0) December 12, 2014
I’ll be stopping by while I’m home for Christmas @FCWFES. Can’t thank you guys enough.
