Region Comes Together to Fight Fire

A view of the grass fire outside Maple Creek 

Over 100 fire fighters from across the southwest fought a huge grass fire in harsh, windy conditions near Maple Creek Tuesday night.

At one point the RCMP were reporting the fire was over 15 km long.

"It was hard to judge because of the wind speed," said Sargeant Jeremy Allard. "The smoke plume was at least 10 to 12 miles long, but I don't know if the fire was ever that long."

Police were called to the scene north of Highway 1 and 6-7 km west of Highway 21 late in the afternoon as winds started picking up.

Environment Canada eventually issued a wind warning calling for the possibility of westerly wind gusts of 90-100 km/h.

Audio of the intense wind in Swift Current on Tuesday night:


The growing fire drew support from all around the region.

"We got fire crews here from Maple Creek, the RM of Maple Creek, Fox Valley, Walsh, Medicine Hat and some of the local Hutterite colonies helping too," Allard said. "Basically everybody with a water tank showed up to help reload the fire truck. It's been such strong support from people who aren't trained in fire fighting that they sometimes get upset when we can't let them in, but of course it's a dangerous situation so we try to keep them away."

No homes were damaged, but Allard said it came close.

"There are some houses that have had the fire right in their yard."

The fire fighters began to make serious progress before 7pm, but it took five more hours of intense work before they had it down to three small, manageable fires.

Most of the crew was able to return home after midnight, while some stayed behind to deal with the smaller fires and make sure things didn't flare up.   

Fire fighters also took care of a grass fire 6 km east of Swift Current Tuesday afternoon.

The city fire department told Swift Current Online they were called to the scene at 3pm and had put it out by 4:30pm.

They believe it may have been caused when a CPR contractor was working at removing some signs from the area. 

Click here for coverage of the fire as it happened and an the interview with Sargeant Allard while the fire was still going strong