Estevan firefighters responded to a report of a carbon monoxide (CO) alarm on May 17.
The alarm went off in north-central Estevan. The lone resident safely evacuated the building prior to fire crews’ arrival. According to Fire Chief Dale Feser, she wasn’t experiencing any symptoms of CO exposure.
Crews entered the building and tested the air with special equipment. No CO was found.
“The carbon monoxide detector she had on the premises was inspected and it was found to be a faulty device nearing the end of its service life. So thank goodness, there was no real emergency occurring. And she was made known that she's got to get a replacement device for her apartment and crews returned back to the fire station," Feser said.
May 17 also marked the second consecutive day in extreme fire danger indexing for the Estevan area. Not only has the hot weather dried out the area, but strong winds are also making the situation worse.
“The big concerning thing right now is that we are in extreme danger indexing. We're going to be experiencing fire crossover conditions. That's typically when we have temperatures of 30 degrees and above, with a relative humidity of 30 degrees and below. And we also have higher than normal wind conditions. This will actually lead to some fairly rapid progressing fire conditions, where (fire) exhibits extreme behaviour and grows in the size and intensity way quicker than what it normally would.
“So we're asking everybody in our response area to refrain from conducting any controlled burns for the next couple days. And then once we receive some moisture, that'll drop fire danger indexing, the temperatures are going to drop, taking us over that crossover condition. It'll be a more tenable environment to conduct those controlled burns,” Feser said.
