Melfort Fire responded to the fire on Macleod Avenue W. on July 2. (Facebok/Melfort Fire and Rescue)

By Mat Barrett

Melfort Fire Department

‘It makes no sense’: Melfort Fire Department responds to intentional fires over long weekend

Jul 3, 2019 | 12:00 PM

Intentional fires on a playground and in the middle of the road had members of the the Melfort Fire Department investigating over the long weekend.

The first incident took place on Sunday, June 30 as there were initially reports of a fire underneath a play structure at the Reynolds Central School playground. That was followed by other reports of an explosion in the same area. Crews responded and located the source of fire and the explosion.

“Some evidence of intentional set there,” Fire Chief Jason Everitt said. “And then an aerosol can that had failed catastrophically.”

There was no damage caused to the play structure, and Everitt said there is also the potentially for people to be hurt in a situation like that.

“Obviously there’s risk anytime that people are playing with fire,” he said. “Especially when you start having compressed gasses and aerosolized gasses, such as you’d find in those types containers. If you’re trying to augment the fire with that, there’s some significant risk. And when they fail, they are under pressure and people can get severely burned or injured. So we’d definitely like to discourage that practice.”

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The injuries from the incident are unknown.

“There’s no logical reason where you would need to combine those elements to start a fire legitimately,” Everitt told northeastNOW.

There were also reports of youth seen running away from the scene after the explosion was heard.

The second call over the weekend for the Melfort Fire Department was early in the morning on Tuesday, July 2.

RCMP arrived on scene first and were able to extinguish the fire in the middle of the road on Macleod Avenue West.

“This was definitely a malicious set. It was a fuel container that had some diesel fuel in it and it was set on fire in the middle of Macleod Avenue,” Everitt said.

Crews were able to clean up the debris from the road, but the road was damaged as a result and will need to be remediated by the City of Melfort.

Everitt added it’s frustrating to see these events take place in Melfort.

“Again, it makes no sense,” Everitt told northeastNOW. “We’re disappointed to see these types of activities happening in our community.”

He added to prevent events like this from happening again, the community needs to work together and report what they see to investigators.

Both files have been turned over to Melfort RCMP for investigation.

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mat.barrett@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @matbarrett6