‘A frightening evening’
Maximum resources deployed to battle grass fire
Lethbridge fire resources were all hands on deck to fight the grass fire in the Oldman River valley Tuesday night. The fire broke out after 6 p.m. in the coulees near the Lethbridge Country Club and Mountainview Cemetery. It prompted the closure of Scenic Drive between 16 Avenue and 10 Avenue South, and a voluntary evacuation alert for residents in Scenic Heights.
“Life is our number one priority so we’re going to take precautions specifically to protect life,” said Deputy Fire Chief Dana Terry.
A total of 20 firefighters and nine apparatus responded from all four stations. Maximum resources were deployed as the fire was quickly spreading and high winds hampered efforts to extinguish the flames.
“Last night, all of our firefighters were used here,” said Terry. “We actually had to call in firefighters who were off shift to assist with our own situations here in the city. We didn’t have extra people to send anywhere else.”
Access in the coulees is a challenge, as it’s difficult to navigate fire trucks down the hilly terrain.
“And then when you have firefighters running up and down the coulees as well trying to fight the fire, all of that zaps their energy. They tire out just like anyone else,” said Terry. “But they did a good job of quickly addressing the fire spread, hitting the high spots and then coming back and hitting hot spots later on.”
Terry said the fact the cemetery and the Country Club keep their properties “well watered” assisted the fire department in their efforts.
“It would help limit some of that spread,” said Terry. “But when it gets into the coulees, it’s not maintained. These are wild areas and because of the high winds we’ve had the last few days... it creates issues for us as well.”
Shortly after 9 p.m. the fire was under control. The City of Lethbridge wrote on Twitter that the fire was out around 10 p.m.
Firefighters stayed throughout the night in case any hot spots flared up.
Lethbridge Fire Services co-ordinated efforts through the emergency coordination centre, which also assisted surrounding communities such as Moon River Estates and the Crowsnest Pass.
“As a community, last night was a frightening evening and a lot of issues that culminated at the same time,” said Lethbridge Fire Chief Richard Hildebrand. “We had power outages, we had this fire start, and as a result we had some voluntary evacuations to deal with. As well we had fires in the neighbouring communities and to the best of our knowledge we had evacuees coming from Moon River.”
It’s a stressful situation when a fire creeps close to people’s homes, said Terry. The fire department’s number one priority is the safety of residents.
“We knew we had to get on it very quickly and make an aggressive stand at the buildings and do our best to ensure that it didn’t cross the highway at all,” said Hildebrand. “Because if it had gotten a bite in the residential neighbourhoods, it would have been a different story this morning.”
Fire investigators were on scene Wednesday morning, however, they were unable to determine a specific cause of the blaze.
Golfers were back at the Lethbridge Country Club Wednesday, a day after the course was vacant due to the weather — and when about 30 people had to evacuate.
Brian Huculak, general manager at the Country Club, said there was two meetings taking place in the clubhouse Tuesday when the power went out.
“Then one of the people in the meeting saw the smoke coming out of the coulee. We all started to react from there,” Huculak said.
“During the whole meeting, the wind was blowing so hard that the clubhouse was shaking. It was kind of an uneasy feeling right through the meeting. Then, of course, when we saw the smoke it was an immediate alarm that nothing good was going to come of it.”
Huculak said members of the fire department assisted the group and people left in an orderly fashion. But the drive out became quite harrowing on the one access road.
“It was unnerving. The fire was right in the left-hand ditch right next to us. For a stretch of 50 metres or so, I couldn’t even see the road it was so smoky. It was kind of a crazy trip out of here.”
A fire ban on all open fires was issued by both the City and Lethbridge County on Wednesday.
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