NANAIMO — Local fire crews dealt with some access issues, but quickly handled a bush fire sparked by an encampment.
Crews were called to the 1600 block of East Wellington Rd., off Bowen Rd. around 11:45 p.m. on Monday, July 18, after reports of smoke coming from bush land behind Canada Post and other businesses.
Acting Capt. Ian Stenberg told NanaimoNewsNOW they were able to track down the location quickly after the call initially came in as originating closer to the intersection.
“We arrived to find an abandoned homeless encampment fire. We put the fire out, this is quite common nowadays. There were two small propane tanks in the fire, previously vented I would imagine.”
No-one was on scene at the time and there were no injuries reported.
Additional resources were sent to the fire once crews got on scene in a bid to get easier access to fight the burn.
“We had to call our wild land unit over pulling 1,000 feet of line through blackberry bushes, but it wasn’t going anywhere so we had some time to do that,” Stenberg added.
Nanaimo RCMP attended the scene and are investigating the fire.
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