Firefighters wearing breathing equipment managed to contain a house fire at Mt Ross Station, south of Sutton, last night.
The alarm was raised about 8.20pm and members of the Middlemarch volunteer fire brigade arrived to find the fire well involved, a Fire Service spokesman said.
However, the firefighters - assisted by reinforcements from the Outram volunteer brigade - contained the blaze to one room and a roof cavity, while protecting the rest of the building, the spokesman said.
''We thought it was going to be worse than what it was, but the Middlemarch boys got there quickly and managed to stop it spreading,'' he said.
The cause of the fire was yet to be confirmed and firefighters remained at the scene late last night, dampening down ''a lot of heat'' in the roof cavity, he said.
