Early-morning house fire labelled ‘suspicious’

Heavy smoke and flames greeted firefighters in Regina as they were called to a house fire Saturday morning.

Crews responded to the 1200 block of Rae Street in North Central around 5:30 a.m.

Deputy Fire Chief Neil Sundeen confirmed nobody was hurt.

Crews have secured the scene and investigators will now search for a cause.

“They’ll be back on Monday just to determine the point of origin but at this point I believe it would be a suspicious fire,” Sundeen said.

The fire department tweeted about an hour after getting the initial call that crews had the fire under control.

Sundeen said the home was boarded up from a previous fire in 2020.

One building with multiple fires at empty or derelict houses is not uncommon in Regina.

Sundeen said it’s a two-pronged approach. For one, he said they have to respond to the immediate threat.

“We need to control the fire and make sure it doesn’t burn the neighbourhood down and injure somebody else,” he said.

Secondly, he indicated they are working very closely with other departments in the city to try and come up with a solution to do something long term to help prevent or lessen houses that are continually seeing fires.

He said it puts their people and the public at risk.

“There are lots of people working together to try to address the issue but there’s no easy solution right now,” said Sundeen.