ESTEVAN - The Estevan Fire Rescue Service has received a shipment of rapid antigen COVID-19 home test kits for the community. They will be handing out the kits at the fire station front entrance.
These tests do not meet workplace standards as far as the negative test results for employers. The antigen rapid tests are only for people who have no symptoms of COVID-19 and can be done at home.
"We ask anybody who is symptomatic or not feeling well, please do not come to the fire station. These are for people that are not showing any signs or symptoms. If you are symptomatic, you want to follow the 8-1-1 line and isolate. Call them, they will direct you to what your next action should be," said Estevan Fire Chief Dale Feser.
Kits will be handed out every Wednesday from 1:30-4 p.m. There is a limit of two test kits per household.
"We ask people to come down and be patient as we hand them out. I'd imagine there's probably going to be quite a few people that are wanting this at the onset here. And we will continue every Wednesday at the same time slot until we run out of supplies," Feser said.
It's not clear at this time if there will be more shipments, Feser said. It will depend on supply and demand in certain communities and the availability of the product, and will be up to the provincial authorities.
In other recent news, fire crews were called to a two-vehicle collision scene in east-central Estevan Thursday morning. There were no injuries but one of the vehicles sustained significant damage and fire crews had to take care of a fluid leak.
"We wanted to make sure that there's no slippery surfaces or combustible, flammable liquids that remained on the road surface. So we did come in, we established traffic control for ourselves, put down some absorbent material, and then we called in the city crews with street sweepers to clean up that particular area," Feser explained.
At about 4:30 p.m. the same day, fire crews responded to a commercial fire alarm coming from central Estevan. Upon arrival, firefighters found that the staff was cleaning the walls of the building with a steam cleaner in close proximity to the detection device, which set off the alarm. The staff was reminded that anytime they're conducting any cleaning operations or any other work close to the detection device, they need to contact the monitoring agency ahead of time.
At about 8:30 a.m. on Friday, another commercial fire alarm went off in central Estevan.
"The tenants of the business were actually changing the batteries in the detection device, which set off the alarm system," Feser said.
No emergency was occurring, so crews stood down and returned to the station after issuing another reminder to always contact the monitoring agency when changing batteries or doing some testing to detection devices to avoid any unnecessary dispatching of the fire department.
