ESTEVAN - The Estevan Fire Rescue Service has been at the scene of a large grass fire south of the city since Wednesday evening.
Fire Chief Rick Davies said they were called about the fire at about 5:30 p.m. Wednesday. The blaze is a few kilometres south of the city’s landfill.
“Crews responded and obviously with the high winds, we struggled to gain control of the fire for a little while. Crews worked until about midnight, when we able to create a perimeter,” said Davies.
A crew of four members remained at the scene throughout the night to monitor the area that was burning. Another crew took over Thursday morning. About six members were at the scene as of Thursday afternoon.
It’s not known how long they will remain. The area where they have been working has a lot of trees and the difficult terrain has also posed a challenge, Davies said.
“There’s still a lot of deadfall and trees that are burning in the area, so that’s going to be burning for a while,” said Davies.
The fire department will try to extinguish it as much as possible, and then watch it until at least this evening when the winds are expected to diminish. The wind has contributed to the fire spread.
Davies said the fire is moving southwest and does not pose a threat to the landfill. No significant property damage has occurred that he is aware of and nobody has been hurt. There has been damage to fence posts and a lot of vegetation.
Davies applauded the dedication of the fire department and others while responding for more than 20 hours to the fire.
“The guys are always willing to step up and do what we need to do. We’ve had help from the mines with their water trucks, and the landowners have been helping us out, which we appreciate, with cultivating fire breaks for us. Currently … we have some other farmers that have brought in some water trucks.”
A cause of the fire has not been determined.
Crews were also called to a grass fire near Macoun on Thursday afternoon and evening.
