Kitchener, ON fire dispatch toned out St Clements and Wellesley fire departments for a confirmed barn fire October 29, 2017 just after 22:00. Dispatch was receiving multiple calls of a large fire with numerous explosions located on Moser Young Road just south of Lobsinger Line.  The St Clements district chief could see a glow in the air from the hall and asked for a full response from Linwood. St Clements arrived on scene and reported fire visible from the road and updated that it was a sugar shack.

Pump 2 pulled in a narrow laneway and had Tank 2 back into them and drop their port-a-tank behind the pumper. After a quick 360, command had Tank 2 drop their high vol on the way out to the road. Tank 2 ran out of hose and had the Wellesley tanker complete the task. The two tankers dropped 800’ of 4” line. Water was initially shuttled from a fire department cistern half a mile up the road from the fire.

The steel sided structure was a large maple sugar operation, approximately 45 x 100’. The Mennonite owners had just put 40 bush cords of cut wood into the storage section of the building the previous week. Two lines were pulled to work the fire, one to protect a small driving shed and the other to water down the trees to the west of the building. Firefighters regrouped after an hour and a half and decided to let the stacked wood burn down for a couple of hours. Once the piles were smaller, the two lines were used to attack the fire. Linwood Pump 1 set up for drafting and relay pumping to St Clements Pump 2 on Moser Young Road. Crews went on air and worked at pulling the steel siding off and extinguishing the fire. The three tankers drove to a hydrant in St Clements approximately 1.5 miles from the scene to refill. Wellesley’s aerial set up at the hydrant and filled the tankers. After an hour of hard slugging the fire was knocked down. Firefighters cleaned up and returned to their halls at 2:50. Box 690 provided rehab on this cold windy night, saw the first snowflakes of the year around 2:20.

Gary Dinkel

Box 690

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