Fire chief outlines issues crews faced while battling Wheat City Metals blaze

Water shortages and combustible items were just some of the challenges Regina fire crews faced while fighting a massive blaze at Wheat City Metals just north of Regina.

Regina Fire Chief Layne Jackson told The Evan Bray Show on Thursday that fire crews on the scene had to deal with water issues in the Rural Municipality of Sherwood.

“The hydrants were so far away from where we needed to be, so we did some relay pumping in,” Jackson said.” The supply itself, we had to shut down a couple times because the reservoirs out in the RM and the plant itself couldn’t keep up to what we were flowing. We were shuttling water in the meantime and had to do that.”

While running low on water might seem like an odd problem for firefighters, Jackson noted it’s a challenge crews sometimes face when fighting a fire outside of an urban setting.

“Whenever you get into the rural side of things, water supply can be an issue,” Jackson said. “We do have a large tanker truck that we respond out to these type of fires. It was out at this one and we’ll respond it out to the rural area.”

The fire broke out Thursday at the scrap metal facility north of the Evraz mill. Jackson called the fire “a bit of a nasty one” due to all of the factors at work.

“You have such a mixture of different types of materials,” he said. “Once a fire starts in a large pile like that, you have a bunch of different fires — like tire fires — an abundance of plastics (and) combustible metals and we suspect there was even some propane and things in that scrap pile.”

According to Jackson, the propane inside the scrap pile where the fire was burning forced crews to be extra careful with the blaze.

“From time to time, there would be an explosion,” he said. “(There was) not anything that was damaging to anyone or injuring to anyone, but we would hear the odd boom, so we had to keep it a safe distance and had to make sure we kept a good perimeter set for that fire itself too.”

After more than three days, crews were able to put out the fire Sunday. Jackson credited the wind for helping them get things under control.

“Wind will play a big factor like with this fire,” he said. “We were fortunate to have the right wind direction, because with that big cloud of smoke and those type of materials burning, it really does affect the operations.”

It’s still not known what caused the fire. Currently, the RM of Sherwood is in charge of the investigation.

A fire hydrant near Wheat City Metals. (Daniel Reech/980 CJME)