Normanview residents witness house fire on Forsyth Crescent

Residents in Regina’s Normanview community had their eyes glued on a house fire on Forsyth Crescent on Friday night.

It was quite the sight to start the weekend, and with black smoke jetting into the sky, one that could be spotted from a block away.

A number of people gathered onto the streets to watch firefighters try to put out the blaze.

Michelle Hachey was one of them. She lives nearby.

Emergency crews fighting a house fire on Forsyth Crescent on May 23, 2020. (Joseph Ho/980 CJME)

“I could see the flames shooting up. But it looked like the smoke was a lot closer to us than it actually was,” Hachey said. “Just grateful it wasn’t windy like it was yesterday.”

Eric Tran lives a few doors down. At about 9 p.m., his brother came home, telling him to call 911.

“My brother is calling me to break the house to go inside to see if anybody in there, or (not),” Tran said.

The fire department has confirmed that nobody was home at the time.

Multiple witnesses said the property has been known to be quite messy, suggesting this was a case of hoarding.

According to deputy fire Chief Neil Sundeen, the house was cluttered to the point where crews couldn’t enter.

“The guys said they couldn’t even get in the doors. There was five feet of belongings up by the doors and windows. It was extremely occupied,” he said.

“We set ladder trucks up and just protected exposures around. The home had already burnt through the roof so we were able to get the ladder truck up and had the fire under control in about an hour.”

Sundeen said the investigation to determine the cause is going to take a while because of the mess.

There’s a lesson in public safety to be gleaned from this incident.

“I would think so … if you’re living in a home, it certainly makes it much more challenging for us to do our jobs for sure,” he said.

This was not the only fire that crews dealt with over the weekend.

Firefighters also doused a burning half-duplex on Froom Crescent on Saturday afternoon.

Sundeen said nobody was inside.