Owners of an older home on Kent Street learned a valuable lesson on Wednesday afternoon: if you must throw out your mirrors, leave them face-down.
Ottawa Fire confirmed on Friday that two outward facing mirrors almost caused a fire on a downtown balcony. The mirrors reflected the sun’s rays on privacy fencing at 256 Kent St, near Lisgar Street, and caused the boards to smoke.
“The mirrors were reflecting the sun directly from these planks, and I guess, over time, they heated up and they actually charred,” said Ottawa Fire’s Public Information Officer, Marc Messier. “It never actually broke into a fire. It just smouldered and charred a little bit, which was enough to create enough smoke for somebody to notice.”
Messier explained that the wood had aged and dried, reducing its ignition temperature. He said this process is known as pyrolysis.
However, he called it one of the strangest incidents he has ever heard of.
“Normally, we would think a magnifying glass or some kind of a mirror that's shaped in a convex or a concave or something (would) concentrate the heat,” he said. “But in this case, it was just weird.”
A four-foot section of the fence had to be removed. Nobody was injured.