Pontiac Ouest and Waltham fire departments spent Saturday fighting a raging house fire on L’Isle-aux-Allumettes, which ultimately destroyed the home.

Pontiac Ouest fire chief Glynn Fleury said his department was called to the residence on chemin Pembroke in the community of Demers-Centre at 9:48 a.m. on July 4. 

He said he called in the Waltham department for support as the day’s high temperatures made the job especially difficult.

“In 30-degree weather, it doesn’t take long for a firefighter to get exhausted, so it’s better to have more bodies than not enough,” he said.

Despite the extra support, it took the firefighters eight hours to finally extinguish the flames.

“We controlled it there, but if the wind would have been blowing in a different direction, structures behind it could have been seriously threatened, it could have involved other buildings,” Fleury said.

He said both residents were home at the time of the fire, one of them outside and the other inside. The man, who Fleury said had suffered some minor burns, went to hospital for treatment but was later released. 

Fleury said while an investigation is still underway into the cause of the fire, the owners said they believed it was started when a solar panel plugged into a generator “arced out”.

“That’s not confirmed by the investigators yet, that’s just hearsay of what the owners told us,” Fleury said.