A few fires made for a busy day for local firemen. We don’t have any good pictures or anything so if you witnessed these events and have some digital information we could post it here for your. I have an e-mail from someone who witnessed a fire in Medicine Hat that was responded to by the Red Cliff fire dept - the news reported this as well. I wonder how deep into the reserves that puts us. What would be their capacity to respond if there was another fire? Cypress County - and maybe Suffield would be left, but thats a long drive. Not an alarmist headline - I believe the term “disaster” applies when there is more fire / rescue to do than there are resources to do it.
Odd to have all those fires start up at the same time. Just speculating, but is it possible Medicine Hat has a budding arsonist in its midst? The apartment condo seems to have a suspect, but the duplex fire seems to be a repeat story from about 9 months ago and all these fires starting at the same time across the city seems …well odd doesn’t it?
If anybody has any information about the fires - please contact the appropriate authorities. If these were deliberately set they put a lot of people in danger.
No information about the fires, but why, why, why do renters not have rental insurance? And worse yet, then expect local people and agencies to help them replace what they’ve lost. It’s not that expensive!!
I agree with that - While I support Red Cross and Salvation Army etc in what they do I hope that all the other renters in Medicine Hat double check and make sure they renters insurance.
as you say humble, its pretty inexpensive - plus you would probably get better stuff.
Its also ignorance as well between the landlord and even the tenants. I honestly can’t believe that some people actually believe its the landlord insurance that should cover it. Reason why there are some out there that don’t have any.
With housing/business developments extending further and further out to the north, south and west, the extent of fire protection is being stretched to the limit and beyond. The response time for the fire department is no longer guarantied and this has the concern of the firefighters themselves, not just the public. The more engaged the fire becomes the more safety risk it becomes to them particularly if it is a large and populated structure. Their backup will also take time and in the meantime they may have to conduct a rescue on top of their fire suppression duties, so public lives again are put at further risk. As it is now even with the addition of the new fire hall (at the airport) there are still areas in the city outside the ideal response time zones. There needs to be a new fire hall built in the north and possibly another in the south in order to provide adequate protection or else stop the development in these areas. The fire department would have preferred the new fire hall in the north rather than the airport but someone in city hall nixed that plan (Smith wanted some volunteers). Had there been an additional fire or a fire in a populated area (not one under construction) would the department have been able to handle multiple fires? Most likely not, as it was they had to draw off other departments just to handle what they had. They almost lost the entire block of businesses back when the Black’s Sports store burned.