When there's a fire, call 911: Fire Chief provides details on Mitchell Crescent fire

Nobody was harmed during a house fire this morning on Mitchell Crescent.

Weyburn's Fire Chief Trent Lee said the fire started on the outside of the home, but the details as to the cause of the fire are currently still under investigation. 

"When crews arrived on the scene, the outside of the house was fully involved in flames," he described. "The flame was making its way into the attic of the structure. Fire personnel made entry into the house as they could hear a dog barking, and woke two people up and got them safely out of the house along with the dog."

"More crews arrived on the scene, initiated fire attack, and suppressed flames. Upon primary search of the structure, a cat was found and brought out and reunited with the homeowners."
 
He said the last he heard, the cat was okay.

The initial estimate of the damage caused by the fire is around $250,000.

"As usual with most structure fires, there's heavy smoke and fire damage, and of course, lots of water damage from fire suppression activities on scene."

"Damage could range from a few hundred dollars, if it was just a couple of pieces of siding or something like that caused by a BBQ fire, to a fully involved structure fire," Lee noted. "By no means is our estimate written in stone, it's just from what we see. A lot of the times, depending on the contents in the house, it could be $250,000 in content loss let alone the damage that the fire caused."

He said they usually don't really take a big look at the contents, it's more about the structure when they're estimating damages to what they think it will cost to remove and replace the fire damage. 

Propane tanks, he said, did make a loud sound at the scene.

"Newer propane tanks are designed not to explode. They do have a safety device built into the valve system that will melt, and release the pressure of the propane inside the tank, which will cause a loud bang, still, and quite a noticeable hissing sound, and a fireball from the pressure being released from the tank," he explained.

He said this engineered control on the new style of propane tanks prevents the tank from exploding. 

"Propane is stored at high pressure and it's a liquid inside the tank, and high heat and flame impingement on that tank will cause the liquid inside the tank to boil, and when those tanks erupt or explode, it's called a BLEVE: boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion. A lot of the newer tanks that we have on the market these days and we use on a day-to-day basis have these safety devices built in that will prevent that from happening. And that's why they have standards that require us to have them inspected and tested every so many years."

Lee said if they didn't have these safety features, a propane tank would act like a bomb.

The Chief reminds residents, 9-1-1 is the number to call for all emergencies. In this case, the caller who notified them about the fire had called the Fire Hall first before being instructed to call 9-1-1.

"There might not be staff on duty to answer the call or they might be out working another incident, so the best number to call at any time is 911 for any emergency whatsoever."

He said calling the fire hall could result in a delayed response. 

"We don't have an in-house system to page our members," he said. "9-1-1 has that system for paging our members to respond."

Lee added that while in this case, 9-1-1 had to be called, some homes and buildings are equipped with a third-party monitoring system that automatically calls the emergency line.