Ash fell across the town of St. Jean as a grain elevator in the community went up in flames early in Saturday morning.
Andrew Dixon is the Fire Chief of the Letellier Fire Department which responded to the mutual aid call at 3 a.m. for assistance from the St. Jean department. He acted as one of the Incident Commanders for the situation that required around 70 firefighters from departments across the Red River and Pembina valleys.
Wild scene in St. Jean-Baptiste, MB this morning as the Nuvision Commodities elevator burned. 😲😥 These were all sent to us in our family chat via my father-in-law. #StJean #Manitoba #Fire pic.twitter.com/o7pWBkN8cd
— drMediaPro (@drMediaPro) October 14, 2023
“We arrived; Morris came on scene as well. Then we mutually-aided out Altona, Dominion City, Emerson. We had the Winkler ladder truck here, their tanker here. We had Morden’s tanker here as well. Oak Bluff Colony came to help as well.”
Dixon explained, the elevator was fully involved when crews arrived and, as of 8:30 a.m. the fire was still burning. At the time, fire fighters were preparing to start dissecting the structure to further extinguish the flames, and Dixon expected that work would take most of the day.
“Right now, we're just going to keep watering everything down. We're going to pull the elevator down and we're going to move the elevator out of town, and we're just going to keep holding it down, putting it all out.”
Because the massive blaze created a large volume of ash that fell through town, fire fighters were also tasked with protecting homes.
“We had to evacuate a number of houses. One of the streets as well, just to make sure everybody's safe. Everybody went to the fire hall for somewhere safe,” said Dixon.
The Fire Chief reported minor damage in areas immediately next to the scene, but all homes were saved.
“There's one fence that was burned through, and we lost a garden shed,” he reported.
Also, Dixon reports there were no injuries.
The cause of the blaze has not yet been determined.
~With files from Chris Sumner~
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