Estevan Fire and Rescue were called to a grass fire on the South side of Estevan yesterday afternoon. Fire Chief, Dale Feser shares, "At approximately 1 pm Fire and Rescue Services were called to a reported grasslands fire to the south-west of the city. Once crews arrived on scene they found a substantial grass fire that was threatening personal property on a section of land, that was being affected. First crews on the scene were directed to the north end flank of the fire to suppress it and prevent any property damage from occurring. There were several vehicles that were being stored on the property, we were able to knock that down that flame before it got too close."

"Crews spent a substantial amount of time, a total of four hours, battling this fire as crews were hampered by assessability of the land. There was a lot of marshland area as well as very rocky terrain. We had to wait for certain areas to progress so we could manage to suppress it without any of our equipment being damaged or put any firefighters' lives in danger. Crews worked tirelessly until everything was brought under control and then the scene was redeemed safe at approximately 5 PM with a few hotspots that did not pose any immediate threat or danger to the public. It was then turned back over to the property owner and he was very thankful for us saving the property." 

"There no known cause of the fire at this time, but it appears right now that it could very well be the case of a careless discard of smoking materials out of a vehicle window as the scene of the fire and initial burn area was just adjacent to Highway 18. It is fairly dry out there so it doesn’t take long for a fire to start especially in the wind condition. It got away from us really quickly we had to deal with a fairly dense vegetation growth as well as a heavy fuel load in there. Sask power was also on scene as there was a transmission line that was going through so we had to make sure that the power poles were extinguisher and there was no damage resulting in power loss as well as the Water Security Agency had a pump shed there that we had to make sure was redeemed safe."

"We want to thank our emergency service partners such as the Estevan Police service and the Estevan RCMP for providing traffic control. as well as the city of Estevan crew that came to assist us as well by running the Hydro vac truck on the edge of Woodlawn Avenue to stop the fire from jumping across the road to the other side and spreading."