LEVAC PROPANE STILL OPEN FOR BUSINESS

It is business as usual at Levac Propane in Saint-Isidore, after a fire destroyed part of one of the two main buildings last week.

“All the (supply) trucks are still on the road,” said Jean-Marc Levac, company president, during a phone interview, March 8. “It’s business as usual.”

Two days earlier, firefighters from The Nation and Casselman stations responded to a call about a fire inside one of the buildings in the Levac Propane yard. They had the fire under control after a couple of hours but kept the site under watch through the night before declaring the situation safe.

Chief Tobias HOvey of The Nation Municipal Fire Department confirmed the fire’s origin in the building’s attic. The site is too damaged to say for certain what the cause was, though it may have been electrical in nature and is deemed an accidental incident.

Rebuilding plans

The March 7 fire was in one of the main workshop buildings where recycling and refilling of 20-pound propane tanks is done. Levac had a March 9 meeting scheduled with the municipal building inspector and an official from the company’s insurance agent.

Levac hopes to be able to salvage the remaining structure for rebuilding. He expects to have the second workshop restored within a month or two, depending on results of the building inspection.

“I think we can save a good part of the building,” he informed. “If I can use the (original) four walls, rebuilding will be faster.”

Meanwhile, company operations will continue out of the other building on the site. The fire damage does not interfere with the company’s propane delivery service from its bulk plant and the company may even need to look at adding to its current 80-plus staff. "We might need to do some double shifts,” Levac added.