A fire early Tuesday morning in the North Bay Trailer Park consumed a vacant trailer. (Submitted photo/Judy Waditaka-Crowe)

By Nigel Maxwell

Fire investigation

‘I knew something like this was going to happen’: trailer park fire under investigation

Aug 19, 2020 | 12:08 PM

Editir’s note: This story was updated on Thursday to include a statement from the North Bay management.

Judy Waditaka-Crowe says she is very worried someone will get hurt if something isn’t done to clean up the trailer court where she lives.

Waditaka-Crowe was sleeping in her North Bay Trailer Park home on Tuesday morning when a fire started at the vacant trailer next door. She told paNOW she was awoken by the sound of her grandchild calling out to her.

“Kokum, it’s getting bigger [the child said], so I jumped out of bed and sure enough [the trailer] was all in flames,” she said.

Neighbours came rushing to help, and Waditaka-Crowe claimed someone saw a car speed off.

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“We have no light out here so they couldn’t figure out the colour,” she said.

A view of the trailer, a day after the fire. (Nigel Maxwell/ paNOW Staff)

The Buckland Fire Department arrived at the trailer park north of Prince Albert around 2:30 a.m. and was there for about five hours. Meanwhile, Waditaka-Crowe and her grandchildren were instructed by police to evacuate their trailer.

“We went around the trailer and sat on the lawn there, my four grandkids, for one hour,” she said. “And they were just tired and scared.”

Fortunately, Waditaka-Crowe and her family were not physically hurt, but the heat from the fire did crack several windows on her trailer.

The fire nearly engulfed two vacant trailers. (Nigel Maxwell/ paNOW Staff)

Last summer, a number of residents in the trailer park were issued eviction notices after attempts by the previous owner to solve an issue with the sewage lagoon failed. Despite the property being sold, a number of people still left, leaving many empty trailers.

Waditaka-Crowe estimated the trailer next door to hers has been vacant for about a year. She said the previous owners appeared to have been in a hurry when they departed and left metal and other garbage strewed around the lot. Waditka-Crowe said the landlord assured her two months ago that a crew was going to come and bulldoze the empty trailers and clean up the lots.

“And I knew something like this was going to happen, and you can see the neighbouring kids come around here and play, like they get in here and get hurt,” she said.

A spokesperson for the Buckland Fire Dept. informed paNOW the cause of Tuesday’s fire remains under investigation.

North Bay management has provided the following statement to paNOW:

“North Bay Park management is extremely concerned with this weeks act of arson within the community. It is our understanding it was a one-off event caused by an outsider from the community and the RCMP is actively investigating the incident. We are taking actions to ensure safety within the community for our residents such as fencing and security monitoring which we will be implementing as part of our revitalization plan.

We acquired North Bay in late 2019 and have been slowed in our efforts by the Covid pandemic to revitalize a community which had been neglected for years. We are pleased to announce that we will be installing a state-of-the-art septic treatment system to replace the aging septic lagoon in the coming month together with removing any and all debris or uninhabited units.

We are committed to providing a welcoming community to current and future residents and thank our current residents for their patience while we affect much needed change to the community.”

nigel.maxwell@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @nigelmaxwell