Six people narrowly escaped a house fire in Tavistock early Tuesday morning that left them with nothing but what they were wearing.
A family of five has lost everything following an overnight house fire in Tavistock.
Firefighters from the East Zorra-Tavistock department responded to the blaze at the roughly 150-year-old home on Hope Street East at around 2 am Tuesday morning
In a short post on the Innerkip fire station’s Facebook page, department officials said Innerkip firefighters worked alongside crews from the Hickson and Tavistock stations throughout the night to extinguish a fully involved house fire in Tavistock.
“It’s a full loss. … I think at this point the cause is going to go down as undetermined. There’s just too much damage at the back to really do a full-scale investigation,” said East Zorra-Tavistock fire Chief Scott Alexander Tuesday afternoon.
Alexander said everyone who was in the house at the time of the fire escaped safely and no injuries were reported. Fire crews also managed to keep the fire from spreading to neighboring homes, though flames did melt the siding on one adjacent house, and the blaze was largely extinguished by 8 am, Alexander said.
“The guys arrived and it was fully engulfed – the flames were out the windows – and they were here quickly,” the chief said.
In a post to his personal Facebook page that was widely shared Tuesday morning, Mitch Estey confirmed that he and his wife Casandra lost their house to fire at 2 am Tuesday.
Estey confirmed he, his wife and their three children, as well as his brother and the family dog, Alaska, were in the home when the fire broke out. Estey said he was in the home’s living room when he became aware of a strange smell coming from his office/art studio.
Opening the door, he found the room engulfed in flames and quickly realized it was more than he could extinguish on his own. Estey roused his wife, brother and older children, and grabbing the baby out of the crib, the family headed downstairs,
“I opened the front door, and my brother jumped out the door with my children and my wife. Then I turned around to go back into the kitchen to try and find the dog, my car keys or my wallet – just something to take – but, by that point, the whole house was already going up and the entire kitchen roof was on fire . … By the time we got to the corner of the street, all the windows had already blown out.”
Estey estimated that only a minute or two passed between discovering the fire and the windows shattering.
“If I had been asleep upstairs, I don’t think we’d have gotten out. I’m pretty happy to have had insomnia today,” he said.
While Casandra called 911, Estey said he ran around the house and began kicking doors open to give Alaska a chance to escape. As of Tuesday afternoon, however, the family dog had not returned to the burnt-out home. Alexander said firefighters had not been able to enter the house to determine if the dog was still inside.
The Esteys are asking Tavistock and area residents to keep an eye out for Alaska and to contact the family if the dog is spotted.
While the family is now staying with Estey’s parents in Woodstock, they escaped the blaze with only what they had on – no shoes, no coats, no clothes and no wallets. Everything they had was destroyed in the fire.
“We have nothing. We made it out with nothing. We didn’t even have shoes. My brother was actually naked in a blanket,” Estey said. “We were barefoot in the snow as we waited for the fire department.”
Kaitlyn King, who is married to Estey’s cousin, posted a plea for help on Facebook Tuesday morning. King said she is collecting donations of men’s, women’s and children’s clothing, diapers and groceries via Facebook.
King has also set up a gofundme page that had already raised more than $2,700 by Tuesday evening.
Estey said he was impressed by the firefighters from the three stations working together and get the fire under control quickly. He also said his family is stounded by the rapid outpouring of support from family, friends and neighbors in Tavistock and the surrounding area.
“It’s really sort of given me the first little bit of hope I’ve had today. … Have a fire plan. It happens so much faster than I’d ever imagined in my mind. We really didn’t have time to make poor decisions. There wasn’t a second to spare. People need to realize this can happen to anyone and it can happen fast, Estey said.
Alexander called the fire an “important Christmas message.”
“Check your smoke alarms. Water your trees. Make sure you use extension chords responsibly. Any of those things could have been a factor, we just don’t know – and practice getting out of homes. … We’re fortunate we didn’t lose anyone,” the fire chief said.
