An Ottawa family is devastated after a fatal fire yesterday afternoon in which a husband tried desperately to save his wife.

Now the Ottawa Police Arson unit and the Office of the Fire Marshall are investigating, trying to determine how she died.

It happened around 4:15 Sunday afternoon at a home on Elke Drive, near the intersection of Greenbank and Fallowfield.

What makes this story even more tragic was that the 74-year-old woman was in a wheelchair.  Her husband, outside at the time, wasn't able to rescue her.

From the front of the house, it's hard to tell the tragedy that unfolded within Sunday afternoon.

It was a monitoring company that alerted 911 about a fire here on Elke Drive, a fire that clearly spread quickly.

“Even the husband didn't know what was going on,” explains a neighbor next door, who has known the couple for years, “because when I was coming in, I saw him raking his lawn, his front lawn. You can see his garbage there, that's what he was doing, he didn't know.”

He may not have known but he quickly found out and tried to help.

“He tried to get back in,” explains Pat Charman, who lives on the other side of the couple, “but with all the smoke and stuff, there's no way he could get back in.”

Neighbours have identified the woman 74-year-old as Mary Warren.  She had mobility issues for many years and was in a wheelchair.

“She had dementia and had fallen many times and had broken her ribs and stuff,” explains Charman, “she could not get out.”

The Warren family, like many in this close-knit community, has lived here for decades, growing families and growing old.

“She was very kind and we often spoke,” says one man, “but for the last few years, she's kind of been inside.”

This isn't the first fire to hit this little street in Barrhaven.  The house across the street burned down in 2010, there was a car deliberately set on fire in someone's driveway recently and now this.

Now the Ottawa Police Arson Unit is on scene along with the Office of the Fire Marshall to piece together what happened.

“At this stage, as per protocol, the Ottawa Arson Unit has taken the lead in the investigation,” says Sergeant David Christie with the Ottawa Police, “and we are being assisted by the Office of Fire Marshall and Ottawa Fire Service.”

“It’s going to entail looking at the fuel load and where the fire started within the house,” explains fire investigator Tom Hoppe with the Office of the Fire Marshall, “and how it spread and determining what the possible ignition source was.” 

For the residents on this street, it's a very sad ending for a once vibrant, strong woman.

“What can you do, it's life,” says the neighbor next door.

The Ottawa Police stress that the arson unit is always called in when the cause of a fire is not immediately evident.  It will be up to the fire investigators to determine both where the fire started and how.