Crews fight two fires at the same time
By Scott Schmidt on August 31, 2017.
A storage yard and shop burn Wednesday afternoon on the 1000 block of South Railway Street. Fire crews responded to blazes on opposite sides of the tracks between 3 and 4 p.m. in the afternoon and prevented this blaze from spreading to adjoining businesses. At least four vehicles were destroyed in the structure fire, which fire officials say is being treated as suspicious.--NEWS PHOTO COLLIN GALLANTsschmidt@medicinehatnews.com At least four vehicles and a storage shed were destroyed, but no one was hurt Wednesday afternoon as local crews battled two simultaneous fires, 200 metres apart — at least one of which is being considered suspicious. Firefighters from two local stations were on scene a little before 3 p.m. behind greenhouses on Industrial Avenue dealing with a grassfire that had spread into some nearby brush and trees. “We had two stations respond from different sides — from the rail side and from the Industrial Avenue side,” said Cpt. Scott Berg of the Medicine Hat Fire Department. “That’s pretty basic, it was just a grassfire.” But just as crews were getting that blaze under control, another fire on the other side and just up the tracks started. And this fire was different. “The fire started, it looked like, in a number of vehicles and spread to a small, old shed,” said deputy fire chief Lance Purcell, adding he believed the shed had been abandoned. “We were actually fighting both fires at the same time so we kind of split (up).” Purcell said crews were spread thinner still when a third call required the department’s attention. “(The structure fire) is under investigation at this time … but it is suspicious.” See Black, Page A2 Massive clouds of black smoke billowed into the air as the fire grew, eventually burning down a line of small trees and then catching onto the shed. Flames reached upwards of 25 feet high at the fire’s peak, as crews could only hope to contain it to that area of the lot. As coincidental as it might be, Purcell says officials are not jumping to any conclusions. As of right now, there just happened to be two separate fires very close together. “We don’t know the cause of either, but we are treating them as separate incidents at this time,” said Purcell. Investigators were on scene at the structure fire well into the evening, with parts of South Railway Street completely closed off to traffic. Firefighters were also on scene near the greenhouses into the late evening making sure nothing re-ignited. “It was stubborn to put out,” Berg said. “There was some pretty heavy timber; it was out fairly quickly and under control, there were just lots of hot spots.” 15
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