Another Brush Fire in Kahnawà:ke
Written by Paul Graif on 4 May 2020
There was yet another brush fire in Kahnawake, this one occurring last night. Wishe Stacey is a Lieutenant with the Kahnawake Fire Brigade.
He says the call came in right around midnight:
“It was a brush fire along the Seaway road. It wasn’t a large fire initially, when I arrived as the officer in charge, there was approximately 20-foot flames covering an area of about 200-300 square meters. It was in the area of the old shooting range, so thankfully there was a lot of gravel in that area but there’s also a lot of bulrush so the major concerns at the time was because of the winds and the number of embers being thrown off we needed to extinguish the fire fairly quickly.”
Stacey says it took them about 20 minutes to extinguish the blaze with 5 firefighters from the pumper truck. Stacey says the fire certainly appeared suspicious:
“My initial was that yes this is some intentional set, but I can’t confirm or deny, there was no evidence that we found, but again, my initial impression was that this set.”
Lloyd Phillips, the Director of Public Safety, joined us live on the Morning D today on K1037 and he commented on the fire:
“As you recall last year, we had a series of people lighting fires consistently over a few week period causing a lot havoc in the community and causing a lot stress and anxiety and work for the fire brigade. Certainly, I hope that this is not a repeat, so whoever is doing that, additional surveillance will be done in these areas and I’ll remind them that this is a criminal offence under normal circumstances, but add ‘Covid’ on top of that, if you get caught deliberately setting fires, it’s going to be a serious charge.”
