STEPHEN RICCIO
LUSKVILLE July 28, 2020
Municipality of Pontiac (MoP) firefighters were dispatched to a Luskville house fire at 3182 Hwy. 148 on July 28, getting the blaze under control within two hours.
None of the three people who lived in the home . . .
were present when the fire started in the mid-afternoon.
Having been dispatched at 3:16 p.m., MoP fire crews had the assistance of some Municipality of La Pêche firefighters, as some MoP firefighters were still at their day jobs.
“I called for mutual aid before we even got on scene and La Pêche showed up and it was great to have them there,” said Kevin Mansey, MoP interim fire chief. “We had 15 firefighters from Pontiac and then probably about seven to eight firefighters from La Pêche, so a good 20-25 firefighters on scene combatting the fire, it was a good size.”
Mansey suspects that a faulty air conditioning unit was responsible for the blaze, like the situation at an avenue des Bosquets house fire several weeks ago.
“I think that’s what’s going, because it’s been so hot lately people are letting their AC’s run 24/7 and some of these older units, they just can’t take it,” he explained. “Bosquets we suspect was an air conditioning unit, and I highly suspect in this situation it was probably at fault as well.”
The building was also an older home that had undergone multiple renovations, which is something Mansey said can contribute to fires getting out of control.
“You get these layers and layers of construction and then you get places for the fire to get into and once it gets into those places it’s really hard to stop it.”
This was the second Luskville house fire in the last six days, and the third in the municipality in July, continuing a trend which Mansey said is not typical in his experience.
