The long, hot summer appears to be taking its toll here as Tisdale Fire Department answered four calls in this area between 9:30 p.m. Friday [Sept. 1, 1967] and 11 p.m., Monday [Sept. 4, 1967].
A fire at Crooked River Monday night destroyed the home of Mr. and Mrs. Clifford McKenny. On Sunday afternoon at 5:30, a blaze at the farm home of Mr. and Mrs. Kelly Nontell destroyed 1,500 bales of 1967 hay and two barns.
On Friday, at 9:30 p.m., the fire department answered a call to the farm home of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Luck to extinguish a brush fire that posed a threat to a nearby crop. Monday at 3 p.m., the department extinguished another brush fire at the farm home of Mr. and Mrs. John Lypchuk.
Mr. and Mrs. McKenny and their small son were not at home at the time the fire was discovered in their Crooked River home. A passerby saw fire in the attic of the building. Tisdale Fire Department was called but could only wet down neighbouring buildings after the 13-mile run from Tisdale.
Mr. McKenny stated following the fire that some insurance was carried on both the building and its contents. Mr. McKenny is employed on a road construction crew. Made homeless by the fire, he and his family are presently making their home with Mrs. McKenny’s parents, Mr. And Mrs. Harry Patrosh. No estimate of the loss was available Tuesday afternoon.
Replacement cost in the fire at the Nontell farm has been estimated at about $7,000. Two barns destroyed measured 22x 30 feet and 22x50 respectively. Four hundred of the bales were stored in one of the barns while the remaining 1,100 were piled outside.
Cause of the fire has not been established. However, Mr. Nontell ruled out the possibility of matches or cigarettes. There are no smokers in the family, he said, and all had just been home a matter of minutes from nearby Kipabiskau resort. The children were still in their bathing suits, he said.
The Nontells farm 11 miles south of Tisdale on No. 35 Highway.
Firemen extinguished a blaze along a road allowance near the Luck farm. Its cause was also undetermined. The alarm was put in when a nearby standing crop was threatened.
At the Lypchuk farm, a manure pile that had been burned when the snow was still on the ground had apparently come back to life. It threatened a nearby crop of swathed rape.
Fire Chief Ken Ballard, after the rash of fires, urged residents of the town and district to exercise all possible precautions during the prolonged dry spell. Fires begin easily and spread quickly under the conditions we are now experiencing. This is no reflection on the persons who have recently had fires, the chief added, in urging the precautions.
