A HOME-OWNER west of Tenterfield has been left devastated after a fire ripped with the top floor of his house.
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The fire occurred last week with Mingoola firefighters the first to attend the scene.
The owner was home at the time but nothing could be salvaged from the second floor of the house.
Tenterfield Fire and Rescue were called to the scene and Fire Captain John Gray said the quick thinking of the Mingoola brigade had prevented a worse outcome.
“They got water in as soon as possible and that is what stopped the spread I believe,” Mr Gray said.
“The man went upstairs and saw smoke, didn’t open the door and just called 000. Maybe if he had opened that door it could have caused a bigger problem and spread.
“Every second you delay calling 000 that’s how many we’re delayed from getting there,” he said.
With winter winding down firefighters expect a quieter period but Mr Gray said they’d been kept on their toes.
“Usually these things happen at the beginning of winter and now we’re at the end… we’ve had three or four fires in the last few weeks.”
The Tenterfield Fire Brigade responded to two other call outs recently, one in Logan St and the other in Rouse St, with the fires believed to have begun because of poor chimney maintenance.
“You really need to make sure you clean your chimneys, check when they were installed – maybe they were installed 15-20 years ago. They really need a regular check,” Mr Gray said.
“(At) one of them the people had stoked up the fire and then gone out for three hours and come home to find the back wall behind the chimney and the roof on fire.
“If they hadn’t come home for another hour it would have been a lot more involved,” he said.