Residents of the small Alberta community of Redwood Meadows, located about 25 minutes west of Calgary, have been hit by a devastating fire.
The extensive damage caused by the fire is particularly difficult for the 34 members of the community’s volunteer fire department, because it happened at their own fire hall and destroyed an extensive amount of firefighting equipment.
The destroyed equipment included three fire trucks that are critical to helping them protect the community of about 1,200 residents.
The fire broke out around 5 p.m. on Wednesday and was as called in by residents who saw flames coming from one of the two buildings that make up the fire hall.
“We have lost a building that contained our side-by-side rescue vehicle — one of our pickup bush buggies, is what we call them — our water tender and one of our pumpers,” said Redwood Meadows fire chief, Rob Evans.
“It’s a huge loss.”
Luckily there were additional fire trucks in a second building that wasn’t burning, so firefighters were able to start attacking the blaze with some help from their colleagues in nearby Rocky View County.
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Unfortunately, nothing inside the burning building could be saved.
Jack Russel is a former volunteer firefighter who lives nearby. He described the situation as “very sad.”
“I don’t know how many calls they’ve dealt with in the last couple of years, but on average when I was here, we were dealing with at least one or two calls a day, medical emergencies and fires, to support all the local areas,” said Russel.
“It’s a big part of the community.”
“We’re doing a thorough audit of our equipment inventory and will be working with our insurance company to provide a full list of losses,” said Evans.
“Insurance will replace the main trucks, so the engine that we lost and our water tanker or tender. But there was a donated bush buggy, a pickup that we used for brush fires, that type of thing. The main truck that we’ve lost was the UTV, so our side-by-side,” added Evans.
“We do a lot of mountain rescues to help out Kananaskis Mountain Rescue. Unfortunately, we lost that piece of apparatus.”
Evans says the fire department’s most immediate need is for a new pickup truck to replace the bush buggy that was destroyed, which is a critical piece of equipment used to support fire operations and helping extinguish grass fires, as well as a new side-by-side or utility terrain vehicle that can be used for responding to grass fires and the approximately 100 backcountry rescues Redwood Fire crews help out with every year.
For now, the department will need to rely on mutual aid from other nearby fire departments such as Rocky View County and Cochrane.
There will also be an independent investigation to try to determine how and where the fire started.
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