Cause of St. Catharines greenhouse fire undetermined
A crew from the St. Catharines Fire Department remains on scene of a massive green house fire that began Friday night.
“Crews are still on scene and they’re working with heavy equipment operators so we have two pieces of heavy equipment and they are pulling apart the complex. As they are pulling it apart, we are right behind them putting out the hot spots,” said Deputy Fire Chief Dave Upper Sunday night.
“I would anticipate that crews would work until dark tonight, will stay on scene but suspend operations and begin again tomorrow at first light.”
The crews are also tearing apart a large pile of peat moss that has been burning since the fire began.
“On the one side of the centre, there was a significant amount of packaged tulips so a large amount of peat. The tulips were crated in peat and so it was a very large pile of peat moss burning in the centre of the building,” explains Upper. “So that’s what we are doing right now. The back hoe is pulling apart that pile of peat. So it’s pulling apart the complex and it’s pulling apart the peat.”
Investigators have not been able to get into the building, Pioneer Flower Farms, to determine cause or damage estimates yet.
Roads remain closed because of the high volume supply line that is running across them. Upper is hoping they will be done my midday Monday but it is tough to say when the roads will be open again, he said.
A shelter in place due to smoke in the air has been lifted.
“The Ministry of the Environment continued to monitor until first thing this morning until about 2:30 and things dramatically improved so they have suspended the shelter in place order,” said Upper.
Some of the buildings lost include residences for the farm’s off-shore workers.
“Right now they are not peak season so they have about 90 staff members, so abut 45 off-shore workers,” explains Upper. “So peak season they are about 240 staff in total and about 50 per cent is off-shore workers. So they have residences for about 130 people in different locations so they have a lot of vacant resident buildings right now.”
“Crews are fairly beat up, but we are trying to get them rehabbed and get them ready to go again.”
No injuries were reported from the fire which broke out at the farm located at 1900 Seventh Street at 11 p.m.
Upper told The Standard fire crews will have to be on site “for a couple of days. It’s massive.”
Fire crews from St. Catharines, Lincoln, Thorold, Niagara-onthe-Lake, Welland and Pelham responded and were still battling the fire Saturday morning. As many as 100 firefighters were on scene using 27 pieces of equipment, said Upper.
“We had several municipalities called in on mutual aid to do tanker shuttle and aerial operations,” said Upper, adding he expected to also call in Fort Erie.
Huge plumes of black smoke could be seen from several kilometres away.
“We received numerous calls of a large fire in the area and so our officers responded and fire did as well,” said Stephanie Sabourin, spokesperson for the Niagara Regional Police.
The areas told to stay indoors included those on Seventh Street Louth, Gregory Road, 2nd Avenue Louth, 3rd Avenue Louth, Glass Avenue and 11th Street.
The Ontario Fire Marshal's office has staff at the scene, said Upper, and has provided use of a drone to get an overhead view. The Niagara Regional Police Service assisted efforts, with personnel set up at surrounding intersections to control access to the site.
Being a rural area, there are no nearby fire hydrants, and crews set up a water filling station at Fourth Avenue and Seventh Street where there was a constant stream of tankers filling up the trucks. McCormick said the property owner also provided use of the farm’s irrigation system.
Pioneer Flower Farms is a bulb forcing farm working with bulb stock growers in Holland to produce cut flowers and potted plants. The greenhouse covers about 650,000 to 700,00 square feet.