Firefighters contend with frigid conditions battling River Street apartment blaze

By Kirk Starratt

kstarratt@kentvilleadvertiser.ca

NovaNewsNow.com

Battling a major structure fire is challenging under the best conditions, let alone when sub-zero temperatures freeze equipment. Kentville Fire Chief Shawn Ripley said his department and others responding in mutual aid to a blaze in a three-storey apartment building on River Street early Saturday morning had temperatures of -15C to contend with, not to mention a chilling wind and blowing snow.

Ripley said the call came in at about 3:50 a.m. Saturday morning. A blaze had broken out in an apartment on the top floor to the rear of the building. By the time firefighters were set up, he said flames were coming out through the roof.

The male occupant was apparently in the hospital and no one else was in the apartment of origin at the time the fire started. Ripley said a tenant in an apartment one floor down discovered the blaze when smoke entered that unit.

Residents of the four apartments in the building were displaced by the blaze and people in neighbouring buildings had to be evacuated. Power to the burning building was turned off. “There’s very little to salvage,” Ripley said on the scene just after noon on Saturday. “The people basically got out with the clothes on their backs.”

He said there was insurance on the building and luckily there were no injuries to tenants or emergency responders. However, conditions were challenging for firefighters because of frigid weather and equipment freeze-ups. Firefighters from Windsor to Berwick responded to the scene. Ripley described the conditions as “extremely difficult” and said they couldn’t shut the nozzles off because they’d freeze.

They had to rotate crews, with switches occurring every 20 minutes to a half hour, to alleviate frozen firefighters. Ripley said they had ice hanging off them and some were so frozen that they “couldn’t even lift their arms.”

Provincial Fire Marshal Harold Pothier, who arrived at the scene at about 6:30 a.m., said shortly after noon that the investigation into the cause would continue. “At this point we expect it was electrical,” he said, pointing out that investigators may not be able to determine the cause with complete certainty. “We’re not 100 per cent certain, but the way we’re going to chalk it up is accidental electrical.”