A grassfire at Onion Lake Cree Nation could be seen for miles over the weekend. Photo by of Shelly Hannis-Sim
The RM of Britannia is ready to join the regional fire ban club at a moment’s notice with more warm, dry and windy days in the forecast.
Fire bans went into effect in the RM of Wilton, the RM of Frenchman Butte and the County of Vermilion River starting April 27.
“We haven’t put on yet, but it’s certainly a time when you’ve got to be a little cautious,” said deputy fire chief Aaron Buckingham with the Britannia Fire Department earlier this week.
“This happens every time in spring where it gets a little dry before things start to green up and of course with the winds we’ve been experiencing lately, it makes it a little bit worse.”
Buckingham thinks it’s probably close to imposing a ban.
“We go off the provincial fire weather index. When we get to the point where we’re satisfied the fire index warrants having a fire ban, we’ll put one on,” he explained.
The index for the Lloydminster region of Saskatchewan has been high for several days with extreme the next level up.
The Britannia Fire Department has been busy despite not having any grass fires in the area.
“We did a mutual aid call for Maidstone on Saturday afternoon this weekend because they were busy on a couple of calls,” said Buckingham.
“A lot of the areas around, you can see the County of Vermilion River and many areas … on our channel of 911 dispatch there were seven different departments in our zone that were all working on Saturday afternoon. So it’s a busy time of year.”
Buckingham says when you are getting into the farming season with a rural fire department make sure you’ve got some kind of water handy whether it be a tank of water and carry a fire extinguisher.
“Things happen when you’re farming. Make sure you are carefully discarding any smoking materials,” he said.
