
Martensville and Warman firefighters responded to a house fire on 5th Street South in Martensville at about 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday, December 12.
RCMP and firefighters asked residents to avoid the area while emergency personnel battled the fire, which engulfed the single-family residential home. Huge plumes of black smoke rose into the air as the first Martensville fire truck arrived on scene. Warman firefighters were called in to assist shortly afterward.

Martensville Fire Department Captain Bill Symons said when the first crews arrived, they saw the exterior rear and side of the home was burning rapidly.

“Flames were shooting across the roof in the attic space,” said Symons. “So we initially hit it with a couple of attack lines, and we were able to knock down the exterior fairly quickly. However, it was still going through the roof, so that was our biggest challenge. Once we pulled the roof down we were able to put the fire in the attic out.”
Symons said firefighters eventually were able to get inside the home, where they did a primary search, as well as a secondary search.

Martensville Fire Chief Kurtis Dyck said there were three people in the home at the time the fire started, but they were able to safely evacuate the building before firefighters arrived.
“The kids actually saw the fire first and alerted the parent,” said Dyck. “We believe it started on the outside of the home at this time, but the fire is currently under investigation.”

No estimate of the damage was available.
This was the second fire in the city on the same day, and followed on the heels of a large fire that levelled an auto body shop on Centennial Drive South that broke out about 3:00 a.m. on December 12.
Dyck said when firefighters arrived on the scene of the autobody shop fire, the metal building was already totally involved in flames. The roof collapsed not long afterward, and firefighters focused on containing the blaze and preventing it from spreading to nearby buildings.
Dyck said about 25 firefighters from Martensville, Dalmeny and Warman were involved in fighting the autobody shop fire.

Firefighters battled that fire until shortly after 9:00 a.m., when it was declared out. They then secured the scene for fire investigators; however, around noon they were called back to extinguish a small fire that had continued to smoulder in the wreckage. A fire investigator was scheduled to determine the cause of the fire later that afternoon.

There were vehicles inside the building at the time of the fire. No injuries were reported in that blaze.
Firefighters had barely left the scene of the autobody shop fire when they were dispatched to the house fire on 5th Street South.