Fire guts Glenboro landmark

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This article was published 18/01/2016 (3729 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

GLENBORO — The village of Glenboro lost one of its iconic and historic structures to fire Saturday evening.

A large, two-and-a-half storey white brick building, located on Warwick Avenue near Lyall Street in the heart of the community, was consumed by a blaze that started at about 6:45 p.m.

Flames illuminated a plume of smoke and steam that dwarfed the village of about 700 and could be seen from tens of kilometres away.

Three additional fire departments came to the aid of the Glenboro-South Cyprus Fire Department, which has 15 volunteers on staff.

Between 30 and 40 firefighters from the Wawanesa and District, Cyprus River and Belmont fire departments ultimately responded to the mutual aid request, Glenboro fire Chief Steve Bjornson told the Sun.

He said the home was occupied but no one was home at the time. There are no reports of injuries.

With wind chill values dipping below 30 C, Bjornson said it was a challenge to keep the hose lines from freezing.

“You have to keep the water running in all the hose lines. If you shut them off it won’t take long for them to freeze off. The big thing is keeping a water supply for the pumper trucks — we don’t have hydrants in town so we have to haul it all in,” he said.

The building is on the south end of a small block that includes the Glenboro Health Services Centre, the Glenboro Personal Care Home and — metres north of the fire — Glen Haven Manor, a 10-suite seniors housing facility.

On Sunday morning, only a brick carcass remained on site. Inside, the rubble was still burning, said Georgina Greenlay, who lives across Warwick from the house.

Bjornson said that conditions at the time, with wind blowing smoke and ash southeast toward Glenboro School and away from the health centres, were ideal for the firefight.

“The wind direction was favourable. With the type of building being brick a lot of heat is contained within the brick. We’ve got fire hoses on all sides, putting water into the building to cool it down as much as we can,” he said.

“The biggest concern when the roof was going, was where the sparks were going to end up. (The firefighers) were thankful there was a bit of snow on the roofs so they didn’t have any problems,” Glenboro-South Cypress Mayor Earl Malyon said.

As a precautionary measure, Malyon said the residents of Glen Haven were moved to the personal care home. He thanked the firefighters and healthcare workers for their work through the night.

More than two hours after firefighters had first arrived, the smoke from the fire had largely turned to steam and Bjornson said there wouldn’t be much to salvage from the home.

“We just let it burn out actually, there’s nothing to save now,” he said at about 9 p.m. Some of the firefighters worked at the scene all night.

Thus far, Bjornson said it’s too early to pin down a cause.

“It started in the basement, that’s about all we know at this point,” Bjornson said.

What will be even more difficult to quantify will be the loss of the building to the community.

“Beneath the Long Grass,” a history of the area published by the Glenboro and Area History Book Committee, states the building was built by J. W. Cochraine.

Malyon said Cochraine was “one of the pioneers of the district, an entrepreneur at the time.”

In 1947, the building was sold to the R.M. of South Cypress and converted to become the Glenboro Memorial Hospital until 1955. Four years later, the building was reopened as a 16-bed senior citizens’ home. After that, it was retrofitted and sold as a private home.

“What happened was the codes provided by government for a nursing home — it just couldn’t fit the criteria anymore, so they had to turn it back and put it up for sale,” Malyon said, adding that the building was not designated as a heritage site.

“It’s an old building, it’s hard to put a price on this,” Bjornson said.

Glenboro is located about 80 k.m. southeast of Brandon on Highway 2.

» tbateman@brandonsun.com

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