By  OTTAWA SUN

Christmas stockings hang from a railing as contractors survey damage from a fire at a Banner Rd. home yesterday. The stockings may have been undamaged, but much of the rest of the house was destroyed in the blaze.

It was a peaceful Christmas Eve for Mike and Natasha Ekdahl as they exchanged gifts and celebrated the holiday at home with their two cats.

But it was a different story the following morning as the Nepean couple stood outside their home at 12 Banner Rd. surveying the damage caused by a blaze that started on their rear porch and ate its way through the back wall and tore through the roof and into the attic.

The couple were awakened at around 4:30 a.m. by the beeping of their smoke alarm alerting them to the danger just down the hall. From the bedroom window, Natasha could see the glow of orange flames and smoke from the kitchen.

"You don't know what is going on, and my husband is saying, 'Grab the cats and get out' and of course I am in my nightrobe," she said. "I am running out here thinking, 'Where do I bring the cat?' and the truck was locked. Thankfully I somehow found the keys and threw her in there and grabbed the other cat."

COVERED IN SOOT

The couple and their cats, Peaches and Kiwi, made it out of the house without injury but a bystander who got too close was taken to hospital suffering from minor smoke inhalation, fire officials said.

"If the alarm didn't go off we would have died in the fire for sure, it was that close," said Natasha. "By the time we got out everything was covered in soot -- even the clothes we were wearing got covered."

Mike ran over to his immediate neighbour's house to warn him about the fire raging next door. Marvin Mathers was already awake when his neighbour came pounding on his door.

"I had woken up for some reason, I don't know why," said Mathers. "I saw a glow and called 911, but they said they had already received a call and were on their way."

The 32 firefighters battling the blaze were finished putting it out by 5:32 a.m. The cause of the fire was under investigation yesterday.

The couple have family in the area they can stay with, but they expect to spend their nights at a hotel. "At this point we are just waiting to hear from the insurance company," said Natasha. "It's obviously not livable and everything has to be cleaned, salvaged or whatever has to be done."

The front of the house appears to have minimal damage with only the windows blown out, but a glance through the front door confirms that little can be saved. Shattered glass and debris coats the floor and there is a gaping hole, criss-crossed by blackened wooden beams, where the ceiling and roof used to be.

Damage is estimated at $100,000 to the structure and $100,000 to the contents.

Natasha kept the tragedy in perspective, saying it could have been much worse. She joked that since they opened their gifts the night before, they knew what they had gotten before it was all relegated to the trash heap.

One thing Natasha wasn't kidding about was the importance of having a working smoke alarm.

"Check your smoke alarms because that's what woke us up and saved our lives and our cats' lives," she said.