HomeMy WebLinkAbout295"Article copied from the Pickering News, undated.
Fire that took a life and did many hundreds of dollars damage to one of Pickering's homes that
was a landmark for over a hundred years caused plenty of excitement here last Friday
afternoon.
The fire that broke out in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Clarke at the corner of No. 2 and
the Brock Road was described as a ""flash fire"" and started shortly before 2 p.m.
The blaze started in a small kitchen, on the ground floor, where two men had been using paint
remover on the baseboards. When the blaze broke out, they got out quickly. Mrs. Clark,
who was in another part of the house, tried in vain to put out the blaze with with a fire
extinguisher. Failing this, she got in her, car and rushed to Pickering to get help.
Firemen were on the scene and working in a matter of minutes.
A maid, Mary Armstrong, was dusting in a bedroom above the burning kitchen.
The blaze swept up the back stairway and up into the rafters. Although the Fire Marshal's Dept.
has not issued a statement, it is believed the woman who was badly burned on the face,
arms and hands, must have crawled past the stairway to the north side of the house.
She was found with her dust mop, lying inside a bedroom window in the northwest
corner of the house
Several valuable paintings were destroyed and loss due to burning, smoke and water was
heavy.
Mr. Clarke was in Toronto at the time. Kenneth Jr., 8, was at school.
Pat Roach Pickering Plasterer, said he left the Clarke home a
1:10 p.m. and there was no fire then. Men working at the store and garage
across the corner from the Clarke home rushed over but were unable to
get far into the house because of heat and smoke.
Firemen from Pickering Village and the South-west Fire Department were
credited with saving the home, which is a two storey stone house believed to be, well over a
hundred years old.
The date of the inquest into the cause of the fire and subsequent death has not been
announced.
"