A large fire west of Edmonton late Wednesday night lit up the sky and a huge cloud of thick smoke filled the air, as flames consumed part of a stalled construction townhouse complex.
The fire happened at the Sommerville Springs development near Golf Course Road on the south side of Stony Plain, where a row of townhomes was burnt to the foundation.
Firefighters responded to a 911 call shortly after 11:30 p.m. Wednesday.
“Upon arrival there were multiple townhouses fully involved,” Stony Plain fire chief Trevor Mistal said. Crews from Spruce Grove and Parkland County were called in to help, with a total of 28 firefighters on scene.
“We immediately went to defensive strategy, just due to the limited access. We had no water supply and just the amount of fire and fuel load we were faced with.”
The area has no fire hydrants, so tankers were used to truck in water to help extinguish the blaze. The fire was brought under control at around 1 a.m., but crews were expected to remain on scene throughout the day to put out hot spots. The town said the last building collapsed about 80 minutes after crews arrived.
The fire broke out in a new development of duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes located in a field between the Southridge and High Park neighbourhoods.
In total, 16 units were destroyed and another 14 were damaged by the intense heat. The homes were all in various stages of construction. The town said only a few units had drywall installed, and most were framed and unprotected.
Mistal said work on the site came to a halt some time ago.
“It’s been under construction for the last few years, it’s basically stalled right now,” Mistal said. “There were no occupants living here at all.”
The large fire could be seen from kilometres away. Video showed flames reaching twice the height of the buildings and the wind carried flaming debris several blocks away.
“There were a lot of embers and sparks being picked up and thrown into other neighbourhoods in proximity to this one,” Mistal said.
Kalin and Kelly Fisher’s home backs onto the field where Sommerville Springs was being built, but they said the site had seen little recent activity until Wednesday night.
“We came outside and the fire was pretty well taller than the trees. Everything was engulfed in flames,” Kalin Fisher told Global News.
Fisher said embers were falling in their backyard, and firefighters came over to make sure the debris wouldn’t cause more fires.
“There was quite a cloud of glowing embers coming across the field,” he said.
Embers burnt some holes through the plastic tarp cover of a storage shed in their yard, but their house was OK.
Fisher said the entire field behind their house was slated for development, but the site has been a dead zone for years.
“It’s been enclosed for the past three years.”
In a statement, Stony Plain town manager Tom Goulden said: “The Town has been frustrated with the development and the developers of this site. Our efforts to mitigate risk and work through the court system to resolve the problems with this area are still ongoing. This situation just adds to the list of grievances we have.”
A 2016 story by the Spruce Grove Examiner said after the project was abandoned, the town put up fences around the vacant site because it was becoming a target of vandalism and a safety concern.
“We commend the efforts of our fire department, protecting their own lives and surrounding buildings was the right call under the circumstances,” Goulden added.
No one was injured. The cause of the fire is under investigation and a damage estimate has not yet been completed.
Stony Plain is about 25 kilometres west of Edmonton in Parkland County.
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