An Eventful Week

It has been an eventful week: we have transitioned from an emergency alert regarding a dangerous sex offender, to a significant fire at the landfill site with a local state of emergency, finishing with the lifting of the state of emergency. The good news is that we have come through it with a better understanding of who we are. We are a community who faces up to its challenges, deals with the challenges, and moves on. We have much to be thankful for including this week’s weather.


Top of the Landfill Friday morning after 9:00.

I would like to thank you for your patience and cooperation. Many of you put up with a lot and I appreciate your help. Once again thanks are extended to the province for the help of their terrific staff. Our fire department deserves our thanks as do the guys in Public Works who have put in long hours in difficult circumstances. Bernie, our CAO, deserves public thanks for the leadership he demonstrated as he led our staff and worked with the Province. Thank you.

The fire, for the most part, is out. There are hot spots and the landfill needs to be monitored. We have an action plan in place to cope with smoldering spots and flames. We are confident in our plans but we need to guard against complacency. Friday night was an example when our plan worked on a hot spot that flared up: it was extinguished and buried.

Here are some interesting facts about the effort required to extinguish the fire.

To date, approximately 131,000 gallons of water has been used to put out the fire, and 1,300 litres of fire suppression foam. At the peak response time, 56 emergency personnel were on site at the fire, and 80 in total working as part of the emergency response. Approximately 1,600 person hours were invested on site at the fire, and around 2,500 person hours in total.

Next week two things are happening: we will be reviewing our responses to the fire to identify the things that went well and identify opportunities for improvement; this is Tuesday night. The other review is of the landfill site to ensure that our landfill can effectively and safely serve the needs of Kindersley and our regional neighbours who use it.

Minister Reiter, as Minister of Government Relations has shared our situation with cabinet. Bill Boyd, our MLA, and I met Friday and he will be helping us locate funds to cover the expenses in fighting the fire.

The final bill for fighting the fire is expected to be more than $150,000. We expect more expenses beyond the $150,000 as we work around the new landfill limitations and limit environmental damage.

Finally, I want to thank Brendan Hein and Mix 104.9 for their help in keeping you informed.

Thank you everyone and Happy Thanksgiving!