After the entire long weekend, the Estevan Fire Department is still looking to figure out the cause of a fire to an uninhabited building Friday morning that fire crews continued to fight throughout the rest of the afternoon.

"Thank goodness the occupancy was unoccupied. Crews still did a brief sweep, a primary search to make sure that nobody was in the building," says Fire Chief Dale Feser. "From there, we confirmed and found the area of origin and the seat of the fire and so we diligently worked on that. However, being such a large occupancy it was definetly what we'd call a 'thinking man's fire'. It wasn't as simple as putting the wet stuff on the red stuff."

Feser goes on to say that the room the fire had started in was on the second floor in the mechanical maintenance room. The fire caused structural damage to the second floor that made it unsafe for the fire crews to make their way up to the source of the fire, meaning they had to use some other methods.

"We had to go with some indirect attacks, we used some piercing nozzles as well as the aerial apparatus truck to remove some tin in order to get into some void space areas where the fire was still smouldering at that time."

The fire is an important reminder to check and make sure all equipment in mechanical maintenance rooms in businesses especially should be monitored and made sure that whether it's a boiler, furnace, hot water heaters, or any other heating equipment is getting the proper maintenance, especially in these colder temperatures. 

While adding a safety warning towards the public, Feser also wanted to issue some thank you's to the various members of the public, as battling this fire was a team effort involving more than just the fire crews, especially with the cold.

"The crews were extremely exhausted, we had a total of eleven and a half hours that was dedicated to that particular fire in some pretty cold temperatures as well, so when you take a look at fighting a fire like that, there's other things to consider. We can't thank the city of Estevan's Emergency Operations Coordinator Helen Fornwald enough cause she assists us a lot on scene, as well as the fire administrative assistant Rhonda Gillespie cause she does a lot of background work, the water and sewer crews. All the crews came together and worked as a team."

Water and sewer crews came out to help de-ice a fire hydrant while the fire fighters battled the blaze, and they had access to the hydrant only thirty minutes after arriving on scene.

The cause of the fire is still yet to be determined.