A vacant house in Charlottesville’s Belmont neighborhood caught fire Wednesday afternoon, severely damaging the front porch as well as multiple bicycles and bicycle parts stored inside by a nearby shop.
Charlottesville Fire Department crews were dispatched around 4:10 p.m. to a reported residential structure fire at 707 Rives St.
Firefighters said they entered the house and found no one inside. What they did find was multiple bicycles being stored in the house by its owner.
The house has been owned since 2014 by Todd Ely, the proprietor of Basic Cycles a half-mile north at 156 Carlton Road, according to Charlottesville property records.
Rives Street resident Mary Fitzgerald confirmed that no one lives at the house at 707 and that Ely uses it largely for storing his wares.
The nearby intersection of Hampton and Rives streets was shut down for more than an hour Wednesday as firefighters worked to extinguish the blaze, delaying neighborhood traffic and rerouting a bus.
By the time the fire was extinguished, dozens of burned bicycles littered the front porch of the house. Many more bicycles and parts were in the property’s backyard.
“It appears that it was all an exterior fire,” Deputy Fire Chief Joe Phillips told The Daily Progress on the scene. “The Fire Marshal’s will determine what the cause and where the origin was.”
An eyewitness said that there had been recent problems with squatters at the property and Ely had sometimes found traces of unwelcome residents in and around the house, such as empty beer cans.
Source: www.dailyprogress.com