STEWIACKE: It was a busy night on June 18 for Stewiacke Volunteer Firefighters as they responded to a three car motor-vehicle collision and a possible structure fire almost simultaneously.
At 5:21 p.m., firefighters were alerted to a three car collision at the intersection of George Street and Hwy 2 in Stewiacke, said Deputy Chief Kara McCurdy,
“Crews from Stewiacke fire immediately headed to the firehall to get gear and fire trucks,” she said. “While firefighters were responding a second call came in for an oven fire at the opposite end of town.”
She said Lieutenant Mike Miller quickly called Valley Dispatch to get assistance from Brookfield fire.
“For whatever reason both TMR and VHF radios were hit or miss and hard to hear and or crackly, we attributed it to the heat and the chief officers called each other to discuss some tactics,” said McCurdy.
Fire Chief Mark Crozier was driving home and stopped at accident to assess and let the crews know everyone was out of the three vehicles with only a few cuts/scrapes. He asked that three fire trucks head to the accident scene (Stewiacke’s tanker, medical and brush truck), while Engine 1711 and two deputy chiefs headed to the oven fire.
“Crews at oven fire found residents had doused the fire with water when they arrived and were standing on front deck,” said McCurdy. “They had turned the oven on to heat up supper and didn’t know there was a pizza box still inside and it caught fire.”
Stewiacke crews removed the remnants of pizza box, cleaned out oven interior and turned the oven back on to make sure nothing was compromised, opened windows and set up a quick fan to flush out smoke.
As for the collision, a tow truck and RC,MP were already on scene when fire arrived.
“When we arrived at the accident, tow truck was already removing vehicles, RCMP had photographed scene and was interviewing drivers and EHS was leaving the scene,” she said. “Crews swept remnants of vehicles off highway into bags and left Highway 2 just shy of 7 p.m.”
