Estevan fire crews had a really busy end of the week.
Thursday evening at about 9:30 p.m., firefighters were called to a vehicle versus deer collision that occurred about 10 kilometres east of Estevan on Highway 39. The deer died as a result of the injuries sustained in the collision. The driver didn’t suffer any injuries. The vehicle had minor damage but still was undrivable.
Firefighters returned the vehicle to zero energy and turned the scene over to RCMP. A tow truck had to remove the vehicle from the site.
The next call came in Friday morning at about 6:30 a.m. A fire alarm went off in the kitchen of one of the downtown Estevan restaurants. Crews that arrived on scene established contact with evacuees.
“Everybody was accounted for. They made entry and found that the fire had self-extinguished. This was classified as flashfire in one of the deep fryers,” explained Estevan Fire Chief Dale Feser.
The investigation showed that the deep fryer was going through a cleaning process, but the oil became superheated and the flashfire occurred, only to self-extinguish.
“This did not activate the fire suppression equipment that is built into the facility itself. Very short-lived. There was no damage or injuries. The scene was turned back over to the restaurant management and they were allowed to continue service,” said Feser.
At about 8:30 p.m. Friday the fire department received another call. Firefighters responded to a reported structure fire on the south side of the city. When fire crews arrived, SaskPower, an electrical company and the Estevan Police Service reps were already at the scene.
“It was found that the building was already experiencing some electrical issues, that’s why SaskPower and an electrical company were already on scene trying to troubleshoot that when something had gone wrong,” said Feser.
Firefighters entered the building after it was confirmed that the power was isolated. There was a bit of smoke, but the fire did extinguish after the power was isolated. They checked for extensions of the fire. None were found, so the crews cooled down the scene, ventilated the structure and turned the scene back to the plant manager.
“The building itself didn’t suffer any substantial damage as a result of the fire, but more from the electrical arching and there will be a little bit of electrical repair (needed) before it can be back in operation,” said Feser.
At about 5 p.m. on Saturday Estevan firefighters were called to the east side of the city, where a commercial fire alarm went off. Once on scene, crews couldn’t find any visible smoke or flame. The building was secured and had just recently closed at the end of the business day. Firefighters did a quick walk around while the keyholder was on their way to the scene to allow access to the building.
The fire alarm panel showed that all systems were working normally, but in discussion with the workers, it was found that they accidentally activated the fire alarm when they were setting the security code. The scene was deemed safe and the workers were asked to check on the correct procedures of setting the security system.
Another commercial fire alarm went off on Sunday at about 5:30 p.m. at the extreme boundaries of the city limits, joining to the RM of Estevan. There was no visible smoke or flame at the location. Contact was made with employees inside. It turned out that they were changing the batteries in the smoke detection heads and didn’t inform the monitoring agency.
Feser reminded the public that anytime anybody is doing any work with the monitored alarm systems, they should contact the monitoring agency first to avoid any unnecessary activations of the fire department.
