It was a hot day of work for one Maple Creek area farmer as his tractor suddenly combusted beneath him.
Walter Ehret was trying to load his hay bails onto his trailer unit when he felt the cabin getting warmer. Quickly from there, the blaze consumed his tractor, but not before his quick thinking saved the field from further ruin.
"The temperature gauge start to go up and then I started to smell a little smoke in my cab," remember Ehret. "My hydraulic line blew up and there was a lot of fire. I got backed away from grass, got my trailer unhooked and got the tractor into the ditch where there's no grass to catch fire."
Ehret's quick thinking may have prevented the fire from spreading throughout the entire field, but it, unfortunately, couldn't save his tractor.
"I got out of it and watched it burn up," said Ehret. "I talked to the insurance and they wanted pictures, so we sent them pictures. It's up to the insurance company to find out what they can do."
Ehret himself suffered only minor burns and had to go to the hospital briefly for smoke inhalation. He managed to escape the deadly situation virtually unscathed.
Luckily for Ehret, his fellow farmers and ranchers in the area are equipped to help in these kinds of scenarios.
Jack Zeiffel is a rancher from south of Fort Walsh, and when he received the call about the fire, he put out the signal for anyone who could help.
"The community out here, we got a WhatsApp group with all our fire trucks," revealed Zeiffel. "The colonies and stuff are on it. I put it on, as soon as Deb called me, in the group."
Walsh had his wife take their water truck to the scene, where she arrived to find some members of the local Hutterite colony had already arrived on the scene.
They weren't alone as plenty of others had received word about the fire, and shown up to do their part in making sure the flames were put out.
"They actually had got there before I had got there," said Zeiffel." They had it contained at that time. From there they had a couple of bales to unroll that was smouldering and stuff like that. It went quite well considering we're battling some wind and stuff like that and dry conditions."
In an example of how quickly equipment can fail, how quick thinking can prevent a worse outcome, and how communities in Saskatchewan can band together to support each other in a time of need, everyone involved in this fire proved those points. It's thanks to everyone's quick response, willingness to help, and ability to cooperate that they managed to deal with this situation successfully.