Firefighters battled a blaze at the Senator Allen Bird Memorial Centre for nearly a full day. (Derek Craddock/paNOW Staff)

By Rob Mahon

Full Day of Firefighting

‘Tinder Dry’: Deputy Fire Chief describes day-long battle with blaze at Senator Allen Bird Memorial Centre

Apr 19, 2022 | 5:00 PM

At 8:26 a.m. on Friday, April 15, the Prince Albert Fire Department were called out to a fire at the Senator Allen Bird Memorial Centre. It would be nearly a full day before they left the scene, and by the time they did the building would be consumed by the fire.

Though they’re not certain how long the fire had been burning before the call came in, by the time they arrived it was clear the fire had been given quite a head start on their efforts to stop it. Even in those early minutes, saving the offices on the first floor began to look less likely.

“From my understanding, the facility had been handing out Easter hampers the day before,” said Alex Paul, deputy chief of the Prince Albert Fire Department. “A lot of the packaging material, the wooden pallets and cardboard boxes the goods were packed in were stored outside the building and along that exterior wall.”

Both the wooden pallets and the cardboard burned very quickly and became very hot. Once the fire started, the construction of the building itself worked against firefighters. Built in 1940, the building’s age and the type of materials used to erect it helped the fire to spread.

“In later years, they had strapped it with metal and put tin siding on the outside of that cedar,” Paul said. “What happened that morning, the garbage on the exterior of the building… caught fire, burnt for some period of time, and the heat transferred through the metal and lit that cedar siding that is tinder dry on the other side of the metal.”

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With flames spreading through the lower part of the building, in the single-story office area, and the tin siding essentially concealing the spread of the fire, crews had to work quickly if they had any hope of saving the building. Unfortunately, during the second hour they were there, it became clear they were fighting a losing battle.

“Once it got in behind that metal, it spread very quickly,” said Paul. “The metal itself, although aesthetically made the building look great, actually was a bit of a detriment to us locating the fire and managing to extinguish it. It got behind that tin and it could just run behind there.”

According to Paul, buildings of that age generally don’t have fire separations. Modern buildings will have fire separation walls every few feet that “compartmentalize a fire” and can hold for a couple of hours. There were no such fire guards in the Memorial Centre.

“Our crews were there throughout the night and even part of the next day,” Paul said. “It would probably be fair to say that underneath that metal siding there’s still smouldering fires, not that they’re going to go anywhere. By the volume of the rubble and the amount of material that fell down on top of things, it’s highly probable there are still some spots smouldering underneath there.”

Paul added there came a point in this fire where they had to switch to a defensive effort, which included an attempt to make sure the walls collapsed inward rather than outward.

He also said the loss of the Memorial Centre was tragic for the community, as it had been everything from a gymnasium to a meeting place for cultural events to a place for COVID-19 vaccinations.

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rob.mahon@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @RobMahonPxP