REGINA – For the third day this Thanksgiving long weekend, fire is shooting up into the air from an underground cavern in rural Saskatchewan.
The blaze ignited Saturday morning at the TransGas natural gas storage facility south of Prud’homme, Sask.
SaskEnergy/TransGas spokesman Dave Burdeniuk says its employees continue to work with Safety Boss, a fire suppression company out of Alberta.
At 2 a.m. on Monday, Safety Boss members approached the blaze with the aid of water cannons and examined the wellhead. The crew came back to TransGas with questions and worked with engineers for several hours.
Each attempt takes a few hours to plan safely and to mobilize with a guaranteed water supply.
In the afternoon on Monday, another approach was undertaken where experts looked at two valves at the wellhead. The specialists had more questions for TransGas engineers and once again exited the site.
Crew members are expected to try and shut the gas off again later on Monday or possibly overnight. Safety Boss says it’s not uncommon for this process to take five to six days.
Burdeniuk says the specialist has been instructed not to touch anything if it doesn’t feel safe or if it could potentially make the situation worse.
“We want to be cautious in this, we want Safety Boss personnel to be cautious, we don’t want to rush into anything,” said Burdeniuk.
“If we have to wait another day, we are very sorry for the inconvenience of the area residents, those 13 people will probably be out of their homes for another 24 hours but we just want them to be safe.”
All four evacuated families have been allowed to return home for intervals of time under police escort.
The exact cause of the fire is unknown but Burdeniuk says there was a failure.
He says all 26 underground caverns in the province are inspected regularly and this one passed past safety inspections, by both TransGas and their regulator.
No injuries have been reported and an RCMP perimeter remains in place.
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