Influx of fires in the city “unexplainable,” says Deputy Fire Chief 

There have been six fires in just over two weeks in Prince George, ranging from the very serious to the quickly extinguished and according to the fire department, the string isn’t something that can be explained.  

The worst of the fires came on October 12th when a blaze destroyed a home on Chilako Avenue, leaving one man dead and putting three in hospital. Witnesses and video evidence indicate that the occupants of the residence were handling large quantities of gasoline but the cause of the fire is still unknown.

Five days later, a home on Shady Valley Road sustained $700,000 worth of damage in a fire of which the cause is still unknown.

Deputy Fire Chief Blake King told MyPGNow that they’ve had to transfer nine or ten people to the hospital over this period of time.  

“Most of the fires have been determined to be human-caused, just carelessness. The last two fires were caused by cooking incidents,” said King.  

Three people were taken to hospital to check for minor smoke inhalation following a fire in a basement suite on Wednesday that started from a cooking pot of oil. The cost of that blaze was estimated at $50,000. A day before, another fire caused around $100,000 in damage, also due to a cooking incident. 

“There’s nothing that we can nail it down to. We went for quite a stretch with nothing major for some time,” said King. “It’s just kind of one of those things, it’s unexplainable.”