A husband and wife are distraught after their Brampton home of 10 years was “burned to a crisp” in a fire early Tuesday morning.
Emergency crews were called to the area of Denison Avenue and Garden Park Lane around 6 a.m. after a fire broke out in the garage of a townhouse. The blaze quickly spread throughout the three-storey home.
Suzie Cruz said that she was asleep in the house when her husband started to yell about a fire around 5:30 a.m.
“I grabbed the dog and the phone and I ran out,” Cruz said. “The flames were everywhere in the garage and it was starting to go to the second floor and I tried to call 911 right away. I couldn’t get through.”
“I could already hear, when I was coming down outside, I could hear stuff exploding on the second floor.”
Her husband, Peter Ellis, said that he was alerted to the fire after hearing some noise coming from the garage.
“It was a clicking of the lights. I opened the garage door and the lights were flashing, going back and forth, then the windshield wiper went, then I saw smoke coming out of the passenger side,” he said. “I opened up the garage door and tried to get the car out, but I couldn’t.”
“I got all the neighbours up and the place burned to a crisp.”
Ellis said that there are only a few rooms in the back of the house that can be salvaged.
“It was frightening, absolutely frightening.”
Two homes on both sides of the residence also sustained damage due to the fire.
Mike Krumm told CTV News Toronto that he was asleep when he heard a bang on the door.
“I thought someone was breaking in, but he started yelling fire.”
Krumm said that he came outside and saw that his neighbour was trying to put out a fire in his garage with a fire extinguisher.
“I grabbed the hose from my garage and tried to help him, but it moved too fast,” Krumm said. “The whole house was engulfed in probably five minutes. Before the fire department got here the whole house was engulfed.”
No one was injured in the blaze.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
With files from CTV News Toronto's John Musselman