Fire destroys colony carpentry shop

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This article was published 26/11/2010 (5659 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It will take years to replace the decades of amassed tools and carpentry odds and ends destroyed by an overnight fire on the Deerboine Hutterite Colony, says its minister.

The colony, located just north of Alexander off Highway 250, lost its carpentry shop to a blaze that broke out inside the building in the early morning hours on Thursday. The fire destroyed the building and all its contents, colony minister Tom Hofer told the Sun.

"It’s totalled. It’s right down to the ground," he said, adding it’s one of the most serious fires the small colony of 80 members has ever seen.

Members of the colony awoke around 3:30 a.m. on Thursday to find the shop ablaze. After some initial efforts by its own fire department, the Rivers-Daly Fire Department was called in to fight the blaze. Help was also sought from the nearby Souris River Hutterite Colony.

Rivers-Daly Fire Department Chief Dennis Jahns says it became clear soon after firefighters arrived on scene at approximately 4:30 a.m. that they simply would not have enough water to save the building.

"We just tried to knock it down and we just knew we weren’t going to do it with the amount of water that we had," he said. "So we just backed off and did an offensive and protected the buildings around it."

"We just kept the windows and the doors closed to try and contain it and when Rivers came … it’s not worth anybody get hurt for, or even killed, for a fire like this," Hofer added. "We said don’t take any unnecessary risks."

Though the carpentry shop did not provide the colony’s main source of revenue, it will be tough to maintain their day-to-day operations without the decades of collected contents, he said.

"It will set us back. You can’t lose a building like that and not be set back. All the tools and everything that you need in carpentry … it will take years and years to replace those tools that were burnt. We’ll replace the necessity, everyday tools in a hurry, but there are so many little things in there … until you need them, you won’t know, and then you’ll remember, ‘Oh, it burned in the shop’."

The wooden structure, originally a train depot that the colony moved onto the site at least 50 years ago and subsequently built an addition on to, had a wood-burning stove inside.

However, the fire’s cause or estimated cost of damage won’t likely be known until insurance officials sort through the remains of the building, he said.

The shop stood about 80 feet away from the colony’s mechanical shop and a mere 150 feet away from its living quarters, though no other building was damaged by the fire and no one was injured during the blaze. The colony’s 80 members all evacuated out of the living quarters as a precaution and then went right to work, lending their hands wherever they could, Hofer noted.

The colony’s women even provided an early breakfast of coffee, grilled cheese sandwiches and cookies for those helping out.

"Everybody was up all night," he said. "Everybody was just pitching in. The whole colony is like a family. Where one helps, they all help. There was nobody there that didn’t just lay in and did whatever was required."

The colony already has plans to rebuild the shop in the future and will use other space in the interim for its carpentry requirements.