WATCH: As Jacques Bourbeau reports, with two children dead after a house fire at the resreve, the adults are blaming each other and no one is taking responsibility.
LOON LAKE, Sask. – The chief of a Saskatchewan reserve where two children were killed in a house fire this week says it’s a wake-up call. Richard Ben of the Makwa Sahgaiehcan First Nation admits his reserve has a working fire truck, but says they didn’t have enough money for proper equipment or to train crews to use it.
READ MORE: Liability issues at play when responding to fires
The truck sat useless in the snow while the fire that killed two-year-old Harley Cheenanow and his 18-month-old sister Haley raged.
Ben says he now wants the reserve to put together its own fire department and improve relations with the volunteer fire department in the nearby village of Loon Lake.
The Loon Lake department was called when the fire broke out but didn’t respond because service to the reserve had been cut weeks earlier over unpaid bills.
READ MORE: Firefighting cut to Saskatchewan reserve due to unpaid bills
Ben says the reserve now plans to pay those bills.
He acknowledges the band got $40,000 from the federal government this year for firefighting, but says that’s been spent mostly on renovating homes to make them more fireproof and buying smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.
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