MOONLIGHT MADNESS HITS 100 MILE A21 -27
NOVEMBER 27, 2013
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STORM BLOWS THROUGH TOWN A15
Carole Rooney photo
Lone Butte Fire Department firefighters Amy Brice, front, Dirk Dunkel and Gary Kremsner (at back) successfully tackled a small blaze inside a kitchen wall at the Cariboo Roadhouse on Nov. 21. It ignited when a heat gun was being used to thaw frozen pipes, but it ended well and the restaurant reopened the next day.
WEIR STYLES TOP MODELS B3
Local landmark saved from fiery finish Cariboo Roadhouse rescued by fast-acting fire crews
Carole Rooney
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A fire broke out at the Cariboo Roadhouse on Nov. 21 that had a few folks worried about the potential to lose yet another local landmark. Thanks to the quick response of the Lone Butte Fire Department (LBFD), the fire was contained to a portion of wall at the rear of the kitchen. LBFD fire chief Jon Grieve says the call came in around 9 a.m. and seven members responded with three vehicles, assisted by 100 Mile House Fire-Rescue (OMFR) fire chief Darrell Blades. The rest of the OMFR crew and the Watch Lake Volunteer Fire Department were both on stand-by for mutual aid if needed, Grieve adds. “100 Mile had a couple of trucks that were responding, but they ended up standing down because once we got there, we realized it wasn’t a big issue. “It was ‘a good one’ – a good thing
nothing worse happened.” Grieve says the cause of the fire is unconfirmed. John Estok, who owns the land and buildings, says he must have accidentally started the fire while attempting to thaw some pipes. Cariboo Roadhouse restaurant coowner Brenda McNabb had called him early on Nov. 20, he notes, to let him know the water pipes to the kitchen had frozen overnight. Estok lives in one of the residences on the property, but was in Mission working on a contract job, so he travelled to Lone Butte early the next day to deal with the problem himself. Estok explains he was attempting to thaw the pipes with a heat gun when somehow the wall ignited. He isn’t sure how that happened. The building owner adds the hot air was blowing onto about two-anda-half feet of exposed pipe protruding straight out of the wall. “I guess it just got hot enough that some ember or something got started in it. I don’t know. It would have been a little bit colder when it got down the pipe there.”
After a time of working on the pipe, Estok says he decided to walk over to his house for a hairdryer to spell off his heat gun for a bit. “Next thing, Brenda is knocking on the door [saying] there is a fire, and it only took a couple of minutes.” Estok says he immediately ran back over to the restaurant, grabbed a fire extinguisher and got a jump on the small blaze with an extinguisher before LBFD fire crews arrived a few minutes later to take over with their tenders. McNabb says the smoke was pouring into the kitchen from under the cupboards, so she was thankful to have been present when the fire started. “I looked, and I said ‘oh my God the place is on fire’. So, I ran over and got John, and I phoned 9-1-1 right away. The response from the fire department was really good.” The fire was contained to a portion of wall and soon extinguished, but Estok says he didn’t sleep very well that night thinking about it all, and got up a couple of times to doublecheck the building.
However, “it’s all good” now, he notes, as the damage was “very minimal” and the fire department even helped him get the water back on. “It’s not a big job. I just replaced the siding that I ripped out, and put new insulation in there. And, now I see there is [unrelated] work to be done, so it will be repaired in such a manner it is never going to be a problem again.” He adds McNabb scrubbed down all the smoky areas and reopened for business the next day. McNabb says she is feeling very relieved, especially since she knows how many aging structures have been lost to fires in the South Cariboo. “Kudos to the Lone Butte Fire Department. They were very fast in getting here, and our thanks to them for getting it out right away, so we didn’t lose our business. “Because it is an old building, and their response time was so good, it actually saved it. If the fire had gotten any further up in the wall, we really would have lost it. It was so scary.”