Cause of Good Friday fire under investigation

An investigation is still underway into the cause of a house fire in Okotoks on Good Friday.

Crews responded at around 5 p.m., with personnel arriving to a working fire in the bungalow, located in the Mount Rae Ridge area.

No one was hurt, though two dogs didn't make it out of the house and died as a result.

Structural damage from the fire itself was limited, though Deputy Chief Colin Sager says the smoke damage was pretty widespread.

"There was smoke damage on the one side of the house where most of the fire was, they tried to ventilate some of that out, but the entire house did have smoke damage."

Fire personnel could be seen cutting holes in the building's roof to necessitate that ventilation in order to slow the spread of the fire, and for crews to more easily enter the structure.

It was an older house, we do classify it as a legacy house. The wood structure inside, it's just a bigger timber and things like that, not the laminated type of woods we have now in the modern houses. Fire response is the same, but they do actively burn differently."

Unlike the fire that destroyed two homes in Drake Landing a month prior, Sager says this one didn't seem to have started outside.

"We didn't have any exterior exposures we were concerned about, we did have an active fire in that south corner, the investigation is still underway, and we're actively looking for the cause."