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Crews knock down attic fire at house near Cedar Springs

Posted at 9:39 PM, May 21, 2019
and last updated 2019-05-21 21:40:27-04

SOLON TOWNSHIP, Mich.  —  Firefighters knocked down a house fire around 9:13 p.m. Tuesday night in Solon Township. There were no injuries reported.

A neighbor told FOX 17 at the scene that a cat may not have gotten out of the two-story home, but the township fire chief figures it probably did. “They’re survivors.”

Smoke pours out of the attic of a house on Solon Street NE in Cedar Springs, 5-21-2019.

The fire broke out around 8:22 p.m. in the 500 block of Solon Street SE,  just east of Division Avenue.

Solon Township Fire Chief Jeff Drake told FOX 17 firefighters arrived to find heavy fire on the front of the house coming from where the electric service line enters it. “The homeowner was out on his garden tractor cutting the grass and saw the lines jumping around; saw smoke and flames from the pole … and then smoke and flames from the mast of his house.

“The house was energized from the power lines, so every time we made contact with the house we got a little poke. So, it was an exterior attack through the windows.”

Consumers Energy was summoned to the scene to de-energize the house service line.

Chief Drake says preliminarily the fire appears to have been electrical in origin, but the investigation continues. Flames were visible in the attic by the time Kent County Sheriff’s deputies and firefighters arrived on the scene of the old farmhouse.

As for the missing cat, Drake says, “When (firefighters) were inside – through the window – they did hear a cat. It probably ran off and hid.”