NEWS PHOTO COLLIN GALLANT Fire crews and police block off Hill Road in Medicine Hat over the noon hour on Thursday, Oct. 4, 2018 to deal with a fire located on a hillside property adjacent to the Sixth Avenue Trial.
Medicine Hat News
A fire at an abandoned outbuilding forced the closure of Hill Road for about four hours on Thursday as fire crews extinguished the blaze, then had the shanty knocked down the with an excavator.
Platoon Chief Kevin Heinrich says his firefighters didn’t know exactly what they were dealing with when a report came in to the No. 1 Station at about 10:15 a.m. A caller to 911 described a grass fire near the Sixth Avenue Trail.
Two minutes later crews arrived at the trail crossing of Hill Road to find a shed-like structure on the secluded property fully engaged in flames.
“The first crew saw heavy black smoke coming from a building,” said Heinrich, who described the property that was once a series of buildings of a private residence.
“It was sort of a building that was left behind, I guess. We extinguished it from the outside then called in an excavation company to knock it down so people aren’t going back there or causing trouble.”
The house on the property was destroyed by fire in 2010, and several other grass and brush fires have been reported at the home since then.
Heinrichs said the cause of fire on Thursday was not known, but he suspected a trespasser could have been involved.
Traffic was closed in both directions on Hill Road as hoses from hydrants on Dundee Street were strung down from near Alexandra Junior High until about 2:30 p.m.
The backhoe knocked down trees and buried smoldering construction material in a pit, while firefighters on a ladder-mounted hose was poised overhead.
