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Humane Society threatened by grass fire, but no harm done

Blaze ignites few dozen feet behind building but wind, quick response from fire department prevent damage to facility
Humane Society fire
A member of the Moose Jaw Fire Department extinguishes hot spots after knocking down the worst of the grass fire near the Humane Society on Thursday afternoon.
The direction of the wind and a quick response from the Moose Jaw Fire Department prevented a potential catastrophe at the Moose Jaw Humane Society on Thursday afternoon.

It was shortly after noon when a grass fire ignited in the rolling field behind the local animal shelter, prompting the building to go on red alert in case it needed to evacuate.

Fortunately, the cool conditions and winds blowing away from the property kept the blaze from spreading in that direction, and the fire department was able to quickly contain things on arrival.

“This is not a good year for grass fires, that’s for sure… dry conditions and the wind are never good,” said Humane Society executive director Dana Haukaas. 

Given its location and the expanse of open grassland in the area, the potential is always there for dangerous grassfires. The Humane Society is more than aware of the issue, though, and has plans in place in case of an evacuation.

“If it’s super emergent and not caught in time, we have to do what the fire department recommends, but if there’s time, we have a list of people who have agreed to take the animals and we’d move them out of here as quickly as we can,” Haukaas said. “It depends what time of the day it happens, but if we’re in the building we can move quite quickly. The list is handy and it depends on how long it takes everyone to get here and us getting the animals to them.”

How long it takes to get things cleared out depends on the number of critters in their care. As of Thursday, that includes 35 cats and kittens — some out in foster care — as well as eight dogs, three rabbits and an orange-winged Amazon parrot.

Haukaas estimated that if the shelter was largely empty, sections could be cleared quickly, but given the variable population day-to-day, how long an emergency evacuation would take is always fluctuating. 

“I can’t really say for sure, because every day is very different,” she said. “We could have two dogs and a staff member could have them out of the building in a couple minutes, but today we have eight dogs or we could have 12 dogs and some puppies.

“So that’s a moving target for us, it depends on the animals we have and where they’re located. We have isolation wing for the cats, then we have a main cat room and a dog room. And our kennels are all in one area, so animals would go into kennels and into vehicles from there.”

Thursday’s fire does come with a bit of good news -- the area burned out covers a large swath susceptible to fires, and as a result, will act as a firebreak should another blaze break out in the area.

Other than that, it’s just a matter of hoping for a bit of snow or rain to bring down the danger.

“We had two grass fires last year that we were on red alert for also, so hopefully we get some moisture here this weekend and we won’t have to worry about it anymore,” Haukaas said.

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