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Charred frames of three homes, the rubble of a car and burnt brush remain after a grass fire tore through Kannata Valley Monday evening.
Crews got a call about the blaze around 4:30 p.m. and say it stretched for about eight kilometres, between Silton and Valeport.
Linda Schaeffer has lived in the area for 11 years and used her own hose to keep away the flames, which got as close as just across the street from her own home.
“You’re just kind of in save-anything-you-can mode; find some hoses, find a shovel and just do what you can,” Schaeffer told 980 CJME as she was spraying down hot spots across the street.
“I’ll probably have a good cry later tonight when I realize just how close everything came.”
Schaeffer said when she was busy helping fight the blaze, she talked to people who said they saw sparks coming from the wheel of a train.
“People have seen it and it was a bearing and you could see the flames shooting out for miles, so I don’t know why it kept going, but it did.”
Steve Wallace, the chief of Silton’s volunteer fire department, was unable to say what caused the blaze.
“We will probably take a look at the railway tracks and go from there.”
Wallace said many residents were helping out crews by hauling water and helping keep the flames under control.
There were no injuries as a result of the blaze.
Fire departments from six different communities — Silton, Craven, Earl Grey, Regina Beach, Lumsden and Strasbourg — responded to the scene.
Gary Hollingshead lives across the lake by Buena Vista and said he started seeing smoke around 3:30 p.m. Monday afternoon.
“If you look across, there’s about a mile long of fires,” he described. “Across the lake, there are flames in several locations.”
Hollingshead added there were hundreds of homes and cottages in Kannata Valley that have all been evacuated.
Luke Lawrence is one of those people who was told to evacuate his cottage in the resort community.
“It was unbelievable. We smelled smoke coming in, and we didn’t make anything of it at first, but we walked outside and people were scrambling, saying ‘get out, get out,'” Lawrence explained.
Around 9:30 p.m., crews said they had the blaze under control but there was still smouldering and hot spots expected for the next while.
— With files from Jessie Anton
It appears the blaze started on one side of the tracks and stretches down the length of them for a while here in Kannata Valley. #sask #yqr pic.twitter.com/K7eo5TtbwK
— Britton Gray (@BrittonGray) May 8, 2018
More photos of the fire at Kannata Valley. According to one of the firefighters, the blaze stretched across a 6-7 mile stretch, give or take. About 4 houses have been lost with the possibility of more. #sask #yqr pic.twitter.com/HBuqKrHm9D
— Britton Gray (@BrittonGray) May 8, 2018
All that remain of the homes is just the frames. Crews confirm three homes were lost but no one has been reported injured at this time. #sask #yqr pic.twitter.com/EMdo0fYXpi
— Britton Gray (@BrittonGray) May 8, 2018
More photos of the damage the blaze has caused. #yqr #sask pic.twitter.com/1kl7XfiATa
— Britton Gray (@BrittonGray) May 8, 2018