Emergency crews on overdrive this past week
Fire, snow, wind, rain, and back to the deep freeze are what defined last week. These elements set the stage for emergency crews throughout the region to put their energy on overdrive. Fire in Potton as well as another in Dunham razed both structures to the ground. And torrential downpours followed temperatures suddenly plummeting made for nasty road conditions.
On Friday evening a neighbour on Monastery Road in Potton noticed flames shooting out of a barn holding 150 of the younger animals in the farm’s herd of beef cattle. Ronnie Korman, who is also the Potton fire chief, lives close by and when he got the call, he looked out to see the same flames. By the time he got to the site it had become a general alarm fire requiring mutual aid. Unbelievably the animals had congregated in the only remaining area of the barn that was not in blazes and they could be moved from harm’s way. Korman stated that, “It’s the country and water source is always an issue. We have a cross-border agreement when we (respectively) need support. The American support from Troy, North Troy, Jay, Lowell, Irasburg, and Newport Center were here to help keep the water supply going,” while firefighters from Eastman, Austin, Sutton and Potton tended to the fire. There were ten tankers hauling water taken from hydrants in Mansonville. It took two hydraulic shovels to eventually move the rubble. The owners of the farm were not at home when the fire broke out. Korman says that he was surprised that this had happened because the barn is only approximately 15 years old. He suspects that the cause is probably electrical, but it still has to be investigated. There is no thought of it being a criminal case.
A house in Dunham on Route 104 was nothing but cinders on Saturday evening. It was reported that all occupants of the home were not at home when the fire broke out and therefore there were no casualties. Firefighters from Dunham, Cowansville, Bromont, Sutton, Frelighsburg, Bedford, and Farnham were present at the general alarm emergency. An anonymous witness says that there appears to be no criminal intent and that the source of the fire is yet
to be determined. By midnight the excavator was on its way to clean up the site.
While work crews scrambled to deal with the washed out rail bridge in Brompton, others were left with similar risks. Streams and ditches swollen and brimming over with water, culverts being blocked by ice chunks causing backup and overflow from high velocity runoff transformed some roads into canals. Where they did not drain off, the deep freeze made for large stretches of ice that eventually hid under the drifting snow that followed. High snow banks along roadsides served as holding walls with nowhere for the accumulated water to drain off.
An early evening alert sent out by TBL Councillor Lee Patterson, saying that, “In Lac-brome the situation is worsening with heavy rains that continue to trickle down to rivers, inflating their flow and causing spillage.” He mentioned that several roads in the territory were already covered with water and that the town’s public works and fire teams had intervened in a number of locations since the end of the day. Patterson’s message carried caution to all drivers and urged them to be vigilant because some sections could be dangerous. By late Saturday afternoon, Alan Bowbrick, director of the TBL First Responders, issued a notice saying that the public works crew was doing a great job, but the roads were still snow-covered. His mantra was, “Drive slower, give more distance between you and the vehicle in front, and give yourselves extra time to get to your destination.”