SEMANS, Sask. – On Saturday, fire leveled a long-running seed cleaning plant and connected welding shop owned by the Greenshields family in Semans, Saskatchewan.
Grant Greenshields said he bought the lentil, pea and seed cleaning factory back in 1983.
At its peak, Greenshields Seeds employed up to a dozen people, including the village mayor, Duane Linford.
The mayor is also a volunteer firefighter who happened to be the first on scene early Saturday morning, when the call came in at 4:30 a.m. When Linford arrived, the building was full of flames.
“Unfortunately there’s no town water out there so there’s no hydrants or anything,” he said. “All we have is the 700 gallons on board and it was basically ‘just sit back and make sure it doesn’t spread to anything else’ because we knew we weren’t going to put it out.”
While the firefighters couldn’t save the structure, they managed to move nearby vehicles and some machinery outside away from the blaze.
Once the flames died down a few hours later, it took almost all of the 30 volunteer firefighters to put out the fire.
They were called back early Sunday morning when winds stoked the flames again.
Linford said the 200 residents of Semans are doing what they can to help their neighbours.
“They’ll get a lot of support from the community as you always do anytime there’s a crisis in a small town. Everyone rallies together to help them in any way, shape or form they need,” he said.
Nobody was injured in the fire, as the buildings were empty at the time.
The fire is not believed to be suspicious. However, there is no word yet on what caused the blaze, nor total damages.