Fire Department springs to action following weekend outages

Emergency services were on high alert over the weekend as the spring storm caused a good amount of outages across the southeast, with the fire department particularly involved.

They had prepared for those outages for the last winter storm, though in the end there were none other than on a few rural farms.

That practice did manage to pay off last weekend when outages were common in Estevan as high winds and heavy snow damaged power infrastructure.

Fire Chief Dale Feser says that they had a few calls that are typical for outages.

"We were actually fairly active throughout the winter storm event," said Feser," It kind of runs the run-of-the-mill calls here for us like commercial fire alarms, downed power lines. We did attend to one hotel occupancy for an elevator rescue of two trapped individuals which is quite common in power outages as well. nothing out of the ordinary for our response. Definitely a little more active of a weekend than we'd normally see."

The Fire Department didn't just do it alone, as they had help from other city services and provincial assistance.

"When it comes to the pre-planning phases, obviously we put our EMO committee on notice and standby," said Feser, "We also called in for further assistance from the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency, their representatives are still here in the area, they've staged down here so that way they have a shorter response time to help some of the outlying areas and communities that are still experiencing the effects of the spring storm."

Feser also thanked SaskPower, who were getting as many outages fixed during that storm as they could.

"It was just a really great group effort. We can't thank SaskPower employees enough for their commitment to their job working 24/7 to get the power restored when situations were safe to do so. The teamwork environment with the EMO, Helen Fornwald really knocked it out of the park again here doing a lot of preplanning and making sure all provisions were in place when needed."

Feser also thanked the roads and drainage crew for helping move out the snow from the last storm before this one started.