Young Family's Home Catches Fire Before They Have a Chance to Move In

A young family hoping to move into a house they were renovating in the 900 block of Maple faced a setback early Friday when the structure caught fire and suffered major damage.

Firefighters were called to the house at about 3:30 a.m. on reports of a fire under the back porch steps, said. The blaze quickly spread into the basement and onto the second floor of the house.

No one was at the house at the time of the fire. It had been about a week since the would-be tenants were at the house doing some paint and trim work, Carley said. They had planned to move into the house in about a month.

The Downriver Fire Investigation Task Force was called in, but was unable to determine a cause of the fire, Carley said.

"We couldn’t find any evidence of a crime or the use of accelerant,” he said.

It took firefighters about three hours to battle the blaze. Investigators were on scene until about 1 p.m.

While the house on both sides of the one that caught fire took “quite a beating” and suffered “quite a bit of heat damage,” Carley praised his men for containing the actual fire to the one house.

“When our guys pulled up, the whole back of the building was burning and flames were shooting everywhere,” Carley said. “They did a really good job to make sure that the fire stayed at the original house. … You hate to have fires anywhere, but to confine them and have them not spread down the block is key.”