Crews continued efforts to extinguish a fire in the 2500 block of McGillivray Boulevard Saturday, nearly two days after it originally sprang up and sent large plumes of black smoke into the air, according to the local fire chief.
Macdonald fire chief Mike Siemens says as members excavate through collapsed roofing material and debris, smouldering hot spots are becoming exposed to oxygen and flaring up.
“Part of that is just the sheer volume of this complex. It was a large, large commercial complex, so thereby you’ve got a large roofline, and that whole roofline has collapsed,” Siemens told Global News Saturday.
“That could be items like insulation, spray foam insulation, or even the combustibles that were in the building, as soon as we expose it to the air, it does flare-up.”
Siemens says two excavators and a small team of firefighters are expected to continue digging through the remains and putting out hotspots throughout the day, and possibly into Sunday.
It’s still not known how the fire started, but it’s believed to have begun on the exterior of one of the buildings and quickly spread inwards.
“We’ve found that area of origin; the grief that accompanies that is this area of origin was very close to the natural gas service that entered the building,” Siemens says.
“That (gas line) was severed from the heat, and that just complicated the whole fire extinguishment process for a while.”
The blaze was declared under control early Friday morning.
Siemens previously said the water reservoir at Oak Bluff was taxed to “below emergency levels” due to the amount of water needed to fight the fire, so Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service (WFPS) crews shuttled water to the site.
He added the building is a total loss, and damage estimates are in the millions of dollars.
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