Cleanup efforts are underway after a forest fire destroyed two homes and hundreds of hectares of land near Salisbury, N.B.
The fire is out but crews are still on site as a precaution.
“We're going to keep monitoring the fire until we don't find any smoke, or we get a really good rain,” says Pierre Gautreau, spokesman for the New Brunswick Department of Natural Resources.
Officials say the fire was random, but vicious. Two homes were destroyed, while others had flames stop at their backdoor.
“We were right fair in the middle of it and when it got to our swamp, it jumped the road, went up along there, then it jumped it again and went back in here and burned the two homes up the road,” says resident Sylvia Lewis.
Sylvia and Lee Lewis have lived in their home for over 30 years. They were told to leave their home on Tuesday.
“I couldn't do it,” says Sylvia. “My husband and I have been here for 33 years. We’ve worked the land, we've cut the wood.”
Lee says, on the day the fire started, he was on his way back from fishing with his daughter when they passed a small fire about a kilometre away.
“The wind was bringing the smoke right toward us, just billows of smoke, it wasn't an hour and a half it was to our place,” says Lee.
Lee helped firefighters keep the flames back, in some cases only a few metres from their home.
But firefighters weren’t the only ones fighting to save the Lewis’ home; they have a neighbour to thank as well.
“Kevin, bless his heart, him down here helping us and his place up there on fire. You don't have a community like this just anywhere,” says Sylvia.
Officials with the Department of Natural Resources are confident the fire is out and are now sending some of their equipment to other areas of the province where fires are still burning.
With files from CTV Atlantic's Jonathan MacInnis
