2 homes destroyed in suspected arson Friday morning: EPS

Two new houses in southwest Edmonton were destroyed in a pair of suspected arsons early Friday morning.

Edmonton Fire Rescue Services (EFRS) was called around 2:15 a.m. to two separate house fires along Esaiw Place near the Uplands.

According to neighbours, one of the houses was still under construction and one the other was recently finished and ready for sale.

Sunil Salaria has been living on Esaiw Place since August. He said he was woken up around 2:30 a.m. by the sounds of sirens.

"It's hard to forget what I saw in the morning," he said. "It was pretty stressful."

Salaria said he saw a fire burning in the finished home down the street, and when he went outside to get a better look, he noticed the house under construction next to him also had smoke coming out.

Salaria said he grabbed important documents and woke up his family in case they needed to evacuate.

"You just try to think if something happened to our house, what would we do?" he said.

Fire officials said the first fire was brought under control by 3:50 a.m and the other was declared under control at 4:42 a.m. Fire crews remained on scene at both fires until late Friday morning.

Both the houses were destroyed. Officials have not said if any other homes were damaged by the fires.

Home surveillance footage shared with CTV News Edmonton shows a white car driving by one of the homes around 1:45 a.m. Shortly after, the video appears to show at least two men lighting a fire and running away.

The cause of the fires is still not known, but police did confirm that both are being investigated as arson.

"Being in a new neighbourhood, you never ever imagine it's going to be like that," Salaria said.

"Hopefully the fire department and the police will find out what happened."

With files from CTV News Edmonton's Adel Ahmed