Fire destroys Fort Erie house

(Updated)

A serial arsonist may be on the loose in Fort Erie.

There have been five suspicious blazes in the past few weeks. The latest occurring at eight Friday morning. It started on a side porch, while the two men who lived there were still sleeping. The flames spread rapidly, wrapping around the porch and within minutes gutted the house on Sunset Drive.

Firefighters scrambled to get this blaze under control. Ed Moody and the upstairs tenant escaped with just the clothes on their back.

Ed Moody: “I was in bed. Somebody pounded on the door saying the side of the house was on fire. So I came out to find the whole side gone.”

Clifford Taylor lived upstairs: “There was one cat I was looking after and they said she ran out.”

It was an old farmhouse with numerous additions.

Fort Erie Fire Department Chief Larry Coplan: “Balloon frame construction. They’re always very difficult fires to extinguish especially when the fire has a good hold on the building.”

The difficulty here is that this is a rural area. There are no fire hydrants..they had to truck in 10 tankers with water.”

The Ontario Fire Marshal’s office has been called out. The blaze started on the outside of the building. Investigators say it’s suspicious.

It’s the fifth suspicious fire in Fort Erie in a matter of weeks. Last month, an arsonist torched pike’s cleaners causing a million dollars damage.

Two weeks later two dogs were killed in a fire on Miller Avenue. That’s under investigation.

Halloween weekend, a house on Lakeview was destroyed. And hours after that, a garage was gutted in Ridgeway.

And now this.

Ed Moody says he’s in shock. He’s now trying to get his life back together: “Just need some teeth, that’s all. All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth.”

Ed Moody is joking, He’s clearly devastated by this. He’s a motorsport historian, who lost a centuries worth of memorabilia in that fire.