A portion of land south of the Rural Municipality (RM) of La Broquerie continues to burn, but is under control, after fire crews battled the blaze for eight hours.
After putting out a smaller fire on farmland Monday afternoon, chief of the La Broquerie Fire Department, JC Normandeau, says at 4:45 p.m., crews were called to a second between roads 25N and 27N, east of PR 302.
"That one burnt around 750 acres of land," he says, saying that included farmland, bush, and swamp. "We had flames up to 15 (to) 20 feet high there, just running away from us."
He says firefighters didn't leave the scene until around 1 a.m.
"It took a long while because it was spread out over a wide area. Eventually we surrounded it, and then let it go within itself overnight. Today, it looks very promising," Normandeau says.
The fire chief notes that crews were able to steer the fire away from structures on the land, and no injuries have been reported.
"We just didn't want it to cross the 302 and go west. We had other barns and structures in the path of the fire on that side," he says.
He expresses his dismay in the suspected reason the fire began.
"It's very sad. We do have some neighbours that saw a vehicle leave the scene quickly, where the fire had started. So, there's a 99.9 per cent chance someone lit it purposefully," he says.
RCMP have not yet received reports of the fire.
Normandeau says the impact of a fire like this extends beyond the physical damage it leaves behind.
"They don't realize what they're doing," he says. "This causes a huge amount of bills for RM. This fire alone is probably $25,000 to $28,000 that we can't put towards road infrastructure."
It's also very taxing on members of the department, who Normandeau says still need to wake up and go to work the next day.
He urges residents to adhere to the RM's level three fire ban, which prohibits fires of any kind.
"People just need to be diligent for a little bit more time here. We're going to get some cooler weather... so just be a little bit more patient," he says.
"We will eventually lift the fire ban, but for now we just have to be 100 per cent careful with our actions. It's just so dry out there. It looks very green in some fields, but as soon as you go into cat tails and bush area, it's very, very, very dry and fires will run quicker than they normally do."
