The Estevan Fire Rescue Service has tended to a combine fire and a semi-trailer unit tip-over in recent days.
Firefighters were called to the combine fire in the Benson area on Wednesday night at around 10 p.m. When they arrived on scene, they found a fully engulfed combine that the farmer had been driving home from a field.
They extinguished the combine fire and a small groundfire that ensured.
Fire Chief Dale Feser said it appears that the combine suffered a mechanical failure.
“A hot bearing is more likely the issue that was the ignition source. Of course with the combines there, you get a lot of chaff and grain dust that were very easily ignited.”
Nobody was injured in the fire.
Two more calls occurred on Thursday. The first was for a commercial fire alarm in north-central Estevan during the noon hour. They found a contractor had been soldering and created enough smoke to set off the fire alarm.
“It was found that no fire was occurring and everybody was safe,” Feser said.
Then at 3 p.m., they were called to a vehicle rollover near the Bienfait landfill with unknown entrapment and injuries. Emergency Medical Services was already on the scene when the fire department arrived, and treated and released the driver.
The driver didn’t suffer any injuries. There was a minor fluid leak, so the truck was isolated and returned to zero energy to eliminate ignition sources.
“The vehicle was on its side. It had flopped over due to wind conditions and a little bit of a hangup of some of the product that was in the box as they were attempting to unload it,” said Feser.
The fire department was also back at the Derrick Motor Hotel on Tuesday to investigate the fire that caused some damage Monday night.
After talking with the contractor who was in there working on Monday, it was learned the contractor was repairing water lines, but had not been in the structure for hours.
“He was trying to repair certain copper lines when he received some electrical shock. So due to a safety concern there, they shut down operations.”
A water leak had contributed to shorting out electrical equipment, which was the ignition source for the fire in the one hotel room.
Also on Tuesday, the EPS held its regular training night in which crews went to the south end of the city at its training grounds for vehicle firefighting operations and foam application techniques.
