Blaze breaks out at known drug house
Firefighters rescued one from Douglas home Friday; it being boarded up impeded efforts
Fredericton firefighters rescued one man Friday from a burning home in Douglas that’s well-known as a notorious drug house in the community.
The Fredericton Fire Department issued information through social media on the weekend about a Friday blaze in Douglas that saw one person rescued from a burning home.
“On Friday, May 2, just after 2:30 p.m., the Fredericton Fire Department was dispatched to Cedar Circle Road for a report of smoke coming from a house,” it said.
“Doors and windows being boarded up slowed firefighters trying to make entry.”
Personnel from all four city fire stations responded with five fire trucks, it said, and flames were discovered on the main floor and were extinguished in short order.
“During the operation, one male was located and evacuated from the house,” the department said. “The male was turned over to the care of Ambulance New Brunswick. No other injuries were reported.”
Assistant deputy fire chief Dave McKinley told the Fredericton Independent the man rescued from the home wasn’t taken to hospital.
The department said the cause of the fire remains under investigation.
McKinley declined to specify which structure on Cedar Circle at which the fire occurred, but the only home on the street that matches the description is 15 Cedar Circle.
That house has been flagged by police and the provincial government as an established drug den, and it’s been the site of several police operations. At a drug-possession trial in Fredericton provincial court last year, the Crown indicated it was used as a stash house in the local narcotics trade.
McKinley said Friday’s fire was the second one in recent months at the same spot.
“It is the same house that we went to in February,” he wrote in an email Sunday.
“The damage was confined to the room of origin, but the house is still damaged from the last fire.”
The province’s Safer Communities and Neighbourhoods unit has applied to courts to evict people who have resided there in recent years and to shut it down permanently, but those efforts have ultimately fizzled.
The unit is on record as having received multiple anonymous complaints from residents in the subdivision about criminal activity at 15 Cedar Circle over the years.
Don MacPherson can be contacted at ftonindependent@gmail.com.